This scheme doesn’t really make sense. Once you’ve convinced a wealthy person to play at your underground poker table, you’ve already won - just play better poker than them, ultra wealthy fish don’t have time to learn to play perfect poker and you do. Trying to extract slightly more money per hand via x ray tables etc kills the golden goose and doesn’t even necessarily increase total winnings, since it makes you win faster but doesn’t increase the amount the fish are willing to lose to have a good time.
“just play better poker” like that’s an easy thing to do in a game of chance and incomplete information, with variance having years or decades long tails. not to mention it’s an unsolved game, so “better” poker doesn’t even really have a set definition and depends on tons of variables. and they literally knew what hole cards were coming - that’s vastly more of an edge than playing “better poker” than someone.
Besides the fact they were often targeting pros - this was reported on and known by LA area pros for at least two years now. why the FBI decided to act now is weird to me. I can’t stress enough that in the pro scene this was common knowledge. years old podcast clips are coming up talking about it.
Some professional poker player told me this anecdote: he was playing at a table with a celebrity. He quickly noticed he has a tell (he did something with his chips when he had a powerful hand or was bluffing, don't remember), and half the table also noticed the same or similar tells. They proceeded to clean his stash.
At the table statistics matter between pros, but if you are not aware of your flaws, you might as well play with your cards face up.
This sounds similar to an article I read about major league pitchers, who must learn to avoid "tells" for the pitch they are about to throw, while opposing teams pour over video of their previous outings looking for those tells.
Some pitchers even said they would deliberately perform a "tell" that opponents had identified then throw a different pitch.
In the exact same way, in cricket there is a style of bowling called legspin and bowlers who use that style have a particular type of ball called a “googly” which turns in the opposite direction to a normal legspin ball. Because legspinners sometimes have to do weird wrist contortions to get this ball to work, batsmen practise trying to “pick” this ball by noticing these tells (mainly whether they can see the back of the bowler’s hand).
So really crafty legspinners sometimes try to develop two versions of the googly: one with a deliberate tell and one without a tell.
Here’s an example of probably the greatest legspin bowler of all time doing exactly this, although with a different ball (a “flipper” or topspin ball) not a googly https://youtu.be/DlyG5wnW7I0?si=O463NAdV6NAAB3cG
Same thing happens in football with audibles. I wonder how many teams are feeding videos like these to AI and asking it to find patterns that might be tough for humans to see. If an AI thinks there's a pattern, verifying shouldn't be too hard either.
The FBI is going to take time building up the case, flipping people, getting recordings, and trying to get as many people involved to not just stop the games but hopefully take down the entire crime families involved. LA Poker pros will start talking as soon as they suspect something fishy.
They almost certainly already have done much of this if they’re going public now. What makes it to the media in the beginning is only ever the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
Exactly. Structures, men behind, organizations involved, networks and other crimes indicated or discovered for example money laundering, betting.
It takes time to build a case. Some laws need people working together and a one time event testing a new table and accidentally having lots of cash in the bags as well as so-called famous people showing up can simply happen by chance.
I'm not sure I believe this. It seems you can just walk into one of these places and roll the whole place, confiscate electronics, and make all the necessary connections fairly quickly. These games aren't a secret and never have been.
I don't like the private (illegal) scene because it's killed action in casinos and games I used to love playing in. The risk to me of breaking the law, being robbed/scammed, or worse is not worth it to play in these games and I wish they'd go away.
Even the mafia angle - the NY families must have fallen a long way if they're resorting to high profile but ultimately petty scams like this. This seems like PR for the FBI and nothing more, like I said up thread this has been common knowledge for years.
I spent a fun few hours a couple years back deep diving into what has become of the old-school "Goodfellas"-style mob these days. Looking into both media reports as well as posts by 'mob fans' - niche forums of those who obsessively follow mob and mob adjacent activities via open-source intel methods - I got the sense the traditional Italian mob families have indeed shrunk to a smaller, sadder version of what they once were due to being eclipsed by new, different kinds of organized crime.
Guys who are known "made men" getting out of prison after doing 10-15 and then ending up doing relatively nickel and dime crimes like daylight armed robbery of a jewelry store themselves for lack of enough income. 25 years ago guys like that wouldn't normally do that stuff themselves. Others have even sunk to basically LARPing being old-school mobsters on social media.
It seems there are two key drivers behind the decline: the real money in organized crime has shifted to new kinds of activities which scale better and can grow much larger. That's attracted new competitors. Some are smarter, some more brutal and some which are both. There's also an aspect that these new, bigger opportunities are far more complex, long-term and can also require successfully operating legitimate businesses as one necessary component. I guess it's not surprising. Even illicit industries undergo accelerating change over time. The old crime families still exist and can certainly still be dangerous - they're just no longer the top of the criminal food chain in terms of earnings.
> the NY families must have fallen a long way if they're resorting to high profile but ultimately petty scams like this
The presence of petty scams does not indicate they have stopped their large scale operations. The Mafia has always done scams like this; it's basically the bush leagues to train for the really big stuff.
This did strike me as quite a small scale crime for all the attention it's getting. I guess the notable part is using a couple celebrity athletes to recruit marks for rigged high-stakes poker games. If you think about it, poker games don't scale up into a truly big money. After paying off everyone involved, maybe they clear a few hundred grand in cash? That's chump change in modern organized crime.
I understand the "need" for cheating but it does seem like overkill the way they cheated, at least as described. They've already got colluders, and then the auto shuffler reads the cards, and then they've ALSO got the contact lenses? Just some marked cards would have been sufficient. And then the rare time the fish catches up after being behind is your "let them win a hand and get traction". It just seems like they really went too far to control every part of the hand
How could more cheating avenues not equal a more likelihood of being caught?
Car analogy--I never had to take my 1976 Olds Cutlass in because the key fob got out of sync or because the touchscreen got fried or the electronic power steering module shorted or... or .. or
>“just play better poker” like that’s an easy thing to do in a game of chance and incomplete information
you just need to beat the table, you don't need to become an over-average pro.
that decades long tail you mentioned is for pros chasing profitability in tournaments -- it's a much shorter tail when you're playing fish in setups.
being better at poker than the guy at the table who is good at making money isn't a big leap, it's what sharks and hustlers have been aiming at for hundreds of years.
You're illustrating why the phrase I am nitpicking is silly, and why poker is somehow still profitable even after the boom of 20+ years ago. What is the definition of "beating the table?" Is it winning? Because I promise you, that's a poor definition. You can be playing perfectly great poker and get slaughtered, you can play terrible poker and win. Look at the career of Phil Helmuth, for instance (joke, I'm joking). Playing live poker, you're very unlikely to get a large enough sample size to have a close to 100% confidence you're actually beating the game. You're even less likely to get a large enough sample from a single table/group of players to know either. And like I said up thread - what is "good" or "optimal" or the highest expected value play can change drastically depending on information. Poker is a game of incomplete information, and you can conjure tons of scenarios where folding something like a pair of Aces is correct before the flop, even though many people who have a shallow understanding of the game or haven't studied it deeply would say you should never do that (for instance, in a double or nothing tournament, where half the table cashes and half doesn't, folding AA with a large chip lead to an all in from a certain stack size is the correct play and happens surprisingly often).
Or like, say you're against a "fish" that goes all in preflop with exactly J7 offsuit and nothing else, no matter how big his stack is, because that's their lucky hand or something. You're not playing as profitably as possible if you lack that knowledge, and if you somehow have that knowledge, there are tons of hands you play there that you normally never would and would appear to others without that information as playing "bad."
It's a deeply complex game people try to trivialize. I've been studying for about 20 years and every year that goes by I think I know less than I did the year before. And I'm just talking no limit hold'em right now - there are tons of variants that all have their own areas of study, and that's not even to get into weird live game areas of theory like tells and stuff (which is not as important as people tend to think).
> it's a much shorter tail when you're playing fish in setups
A lot of rich people know more about poker than middle-income scrubs. You don't want to find out the fish you're chasing was a shark all along. The point here is to turn a game a chance into a profit center, suggesting they just do it legitimately missed the point and assumes the scammers themselves have the time or talent to become good enough to reliably fleece people legitimately. It also means you have to vet the people you invite, rather than confidently turning out the pockets of scrubs and capable players alike.
People making most money _playing_ poker are really really good players that get invited to games with the wealthy people. This takes both poker skills, social skills (being entertaining) and potentially doing some occasional "fun" (incorrect) plays.
They are not the best poker players in the world. Best poker players have the misfortune of not being invited to "fun" millionaire games
If you have enough of an edge, the variance is really not that big. The only reason to have high-tech cheating when you already have a table full of fish - is if the people running the scheme are not very good at poker
think of the spotlight the NBA had because of opening night! Someone in the FBI/admin wanted this news to drop right when the NBA was trying to make a splash and tarnish their new season
You are ignoring why people play the game: reading people and avoiding being read (lies, misdirection). I would predict your job is technical rather than people oriented. There's plenty of other card games where learning the odds matters, but poker has a bit more depth.
I read a theory that the poker winnings were not the scam.
The scam was that the criminal element would HELP the NBA players cheat at poker, and then blackmail them with that info to change the outcomes of NBA games, which they were betting on, from which they could derive greater scale of winnings.
imo that doesn't make sense. All the online betting platforms will cut off the sharps. If you are net profitable and you make too much money from them, you will get banned.
Well first of all, organized crime does not need an online platform to profit off of fixing professional sports games. There are still plenty of bookies running around offering better odds than draftkings. Though, if they really wanted to, they could make smaller bets under hundreds of accounts.
There is also the very strong possibility that they are colluding with the online betting platforms in some way. Coupled with the fact that any difference-maker athlete is getting a huge salary, and blackmail/extortion becomes your best option to getting one on your side.
Organized crime operations have no problem getting a lot of people involved in their schemes. They wouldn't use one account. They'd spread the bets over a large number of people and accounts and also possibly sell the information.
First, people who are banned from online bookies use "horses" or other not-banned players to place bets for them.
Second, the FBI is targeting real world Mafia members, who will typically be the bookies taking action from others. If they know in advance, through blackmail or collusion that an NBA player or coach will throw a game, they can exploit this versus their entire betting pool for massive wins against the suckers placing bets with them.
You're focusing on a game with player vs. house odds, like a casino. Online betting platforms do offer some of these games but they are clearing markets for gambling; they manipualte the odds to arbitrage wagering and take a cut regardless of the outcome. It's all about volume. If you make a huge wager on a long-odds parlay, they no longer look the same for the next (or other side) of that specific (or components of the) wager.
You don't want to extract more money per hand, you want to build up the fish (check the text message screenshots in the article) and then strike at the right point. The x rays remove the luck from those big hands.
> Once you’ve convinced a wealthy person to play at your underground poker table, you’ve already won - just play better poker than them, ultra wealthy fish don’t have time to learn to play perfect poker and you do.
You would be surprised at how good some very wealthy people are at poker. There is a lot of variance in the game and they don't want that. In fact what they want is _exactly_ wealthy people who are quite good at poker because they make big bets and you can reliably bust them out on _one hand_ if you set it up properly after playing a fair game all night. And the great thing about that is that they feel like the night overall was fair and fun, because it was. You just cheat them on one or two hands at the most.
People who are bad at poker can also be quite difficult to reliably take money from fairly because they play randomly and sometimes win huge pots out of complete luck. For one thing, they are near impossible to bluff out of hands, so you end up having to fold a lot more than normal because you can only play with strong hands against them. If you are interested in making a lot of money, you certainly want those strong hands more often than normal.
The trick isn't winning when the celebrity is at the table, it is in getting the celebrity to the table, then keepong the victim there.
It's not about winning mote on each hand. It's about keeping the target happy as money drains away. And that was their aim.
By controlling the whole game, they were able to psychologically manipulate the situation. The target was at tbe table with someone they respected. Saw others win and lose large amounts of money. Sometimes won themselves.
Ooooh you use all these tools in order to _control_ the game, so that is is as fun as possible. So the victim still loses, as they would without the tools, but now they're happy as it happens.
Poker requires skill but there's still a major amount of chance involved. Removing the chance and conspiring against a single player turns the game into a show. You can set up cheap wins and expensive losses. It doesn't really matter how well the other players win or lose because they are all on the same team, you're the only one actually losing any money.
I remember as a kid, I'd play battleship with my siblings. I was really good at it, they were not. They hated when it was obvious that I let them win but also hated when I beat them badly so I found a way to make the game go longer. Often we'd play on a glass table and I'd "drop" a piece so I could peek under the table and see where their pieces were. I could get a hit and then miss many follow up shots to slowly destroy their ship and give them more time to find and destroy mine. They'd gloat over their hard-fought win but I'd just smile and beat them for real next round. I could have done this without peeking but I wanted to make sure I didn't accidentally play too well.
Exactly, to a pro poker player a celebrity or athlete looks like an easy target. Someone with a lot of money, likes to play for fun, and doesn't have the same skills as a pro. They are at the table to bait the pros. But now the problem is you need those same players to win in order to extract any money from the game, hence the high-tech cheating.
They were using sports celebrities as the draw to the table, not expert poker players.
Cheating at poker also looks less threatening than playing against an expert, counterintuitively. Someone who cheats can pull out some big wins on some bets that look statistically bad. The target can see this and think the other party is playing poorly (betting on non-obvious hands) but simply getting lucky.
Contrast this with a shrewd expert poker player who will be easier to spot.
They want the target to think the celebrity sports figure is just getting lucky on bad bets, not that they're an expert poker shark who's going to take all of their money.
> Once you’ve convinced a wealthy person to play at your underground poker table, you’ve already won - just play better poker than them,
This is why in the book Molly's Game [0], the author mentions explicitly that she didn't want professionals in her game.
This b/c her game was seen as a game between "regular/amateur" players who just happened to be famous and/or have a lot of money. This was also DESPITE poker professionals both asking her to play AND offering to give her a stake of their winnings.
Granted, certain players (e.g. Tobey Maguire) were MUCH better than the other players but it seems that didn't matter as long as poker wasn't their primary source of income.
You really don't understand the mind of fraudsters and criminals. The reason they do what they do is because they don't want to "just be better at X than Y" and spend the effort for that, they want to take the shortcut and they think they've found the best shortcut considering their situation.
Once you start to look at what people are doing with that perspective, things will start to make more sense.
Wealthy people aren't dumb - they don't join games where the odds are tilted against them. In these high-stake private games they can usually demand and set the rules like shallow stacks (100BB), enforced straddles, raising stakes after a loss, button games etc. that remove the GTO / poker element and make the game more gambly.
Boring pros who play these games straight up and don't "give action" don't get invited back.
This is how you can have some of the best poker players like Tom Dwan get absolutely wiped out while playing against whales in Macau
If you want to see a more recent example of this - the amateur whale Monarch recently took on one of the best cash game heads up players Bjorn Lee. I won't spoil the result because it's highly entertaining and demonstrates how the game works at these stakes:
You don't need to play better poker. You can just have multiple people on the same team at the same table and communicating, vastly increasing your odds of your team having the best hand.
My understanding is that collusion is rampant in poker.
If you get introduced to a 'friendly' game of 5 players there's a good chance that these guys are signalling to each other and basically folding to whoever's got the best hand. You can't win against that. Even if you have 2 new players showing up at a table existing players could worry about collusion.
If you don't have the fancy trappings those guys did it is almost impossible to catch people colluding in poker.
Diminished? More like, matured into white collar crime. There's no need to murder people on the street any more, that kind of dirty work is left to some random Southern American cartels, and the white collar crime brings in more than enough profit while also being way less risky should the feds catch up on it.
I don't know if I buy that. If we were to put this in white collar terms, we'd all be questioning Tim Cook if he decided that selling ice cream was a great resource allocation decision.
I'd get dirt on the sitting president, then leverage him to make decisions with obvious market implication. Examples: give me a day's notice that the federal government is going to invest in a dinky mining company, or tariffs are coming on foreign electronics... except next week <these companies> are exempt. You gotta believe people on the inside are making fortunes as the markets continue to make big swings up & down.
> You gotta believe people on the inside are making fortunes as the markets continue to make big swings up & down.
Yeah but that's friends of the emperor, not organized crime (although granted, the distinction between these two groups is getting smaller by the day).
Organized crime? That money is literally everywhere. Restaurants, real estate, cars, the stock markets... the only place you'll rarely spot it is, ironically, gambling, way too many chances of getting caught on a paper trail. A lot of it is also invested in art pieces stored in one tax haven/freeport or another, really easy to launder money or evade taxes.
Honestly this is the first “advanced” mafia scheme I’ve heard of in a while.
Last time I heard about a mafia crime it was a very sloppy hit that sounded more like what you hear from teenagers in Chicago shooting at each other.
Though tbf it could easily have always been like that and I’m just blinded my media bias about a group of people I’ve never known form a time I’ve never known.
Sometimes the wealthy person is the shark, and you're the fish...
In Molly's Game, Tobey Maguire was the celebrity shark. (In the movie he was played by Michael Cera). He could easily have been a professional poker player, but he makes way more from acting and he prefers the easy play in private games.
No need to learn; just hire players who are better than the fish and split the profits???
Once it is your shuffler, I could cobble together a Raspberry Pi to light a slightly different wavelength LED when it dealt them two pictures and would need to concentrate to lose enough to get all their money.
> In what sounds like an Ocean's Eleven film plot, prosecutors say these "unwitting" victims were cheated out of at least $7m (£5.25m) in poker games - with one person losing at least $1.8m.
Definitely a lot of work but that seems like a half decent payday to me.
More than 30 arrests, and the scheme dates back to as early as 2019.
The article says "A cut OF THE PROFITS went to those who helped in the plot," implying that the $7m wasn't truly profit but actually revenue? The writing is unclear to me. I'm not sure if this is before paying out to 30+ people over several years, or after, but article implies before, that it's how much was taken from victims. That I think makes the difference on whether or not it was a decent payday. The profit would be how much supposedly went to fund their other operations, which the article does allege some went to.
There may be more victims. I doubt it’s based on a thorough audit of accounting, just those that put in a complaint. But how do you verify a complaint?
Honestly I imagine a lot of this just became chasing yet another thrill that net you maybe tens of thousands of dollars. I could totally see why someone would be in to that. Most hobbies drain your bank account after all lol
Same reason there are people out there who shoplift even though they don’t need what they’re grabbing. The thrill of the act.
I can definitely imagine a scenario it was worth it (a) just to fund them getting to hang out with NBA players, and/or (b) make connections with other wealthy folks in ways that are beneficial towards other ends.
And that they just didn't want to operate it at a loss.
Extortion risks exposing you in a way that quietly taking their money through cheating at cards does not. It’s also strikes me as a far more serious crime but I could be wrong.
The profit from a scheme like this would likely be in the high tens of millions of dollars.
The poker game itself in high-roller situations could be a million plus per night depending on the stakes.
Then there's the whole "you owe the Mafia" angle with NBA players and coaches. It's a pretty clear line to the Mafia making tens of millions of dollars on rigged NBA games.
Seems pretty clear to me the risk and excitement of the scheme was probably a big part of the appeal for these people, as much as the total cash amount they took home.
Most criminals have a specific type of cleverness, but not intelligence.
If they were smart people, they wouldn't do the crimes in the first place.
I dealt with a low-tech breach at one of the hospitals I worked for.
The criminal worked in HIM, and used paper and pencil to note specific info about specific types of patients. Since they worked in HIM, it was expected for them to view many medical records in a day and no app detects paper/pencil, so quite clever so far.
Ultimately, they used this info to file false tax returns to steal the refunds.
The problem? They filed 881 false tax returns annnnnnd used the same address for all of them. DOH.
They were busted/arrested and off to jail they went.
Clever, right until the end, then abysmally stupid.
HIM = Health Information Management for anyone else wondering.
If they were smart people, they wouldn't do the crimes in the first place.
There are tons of smart people committing crimes. The levels of Intelligence, success, luck, greed, and morals can co-exist in every possible combination within one human.
Organized crime groups are rarely interested in "the long game". They work on the assumption that the party will end sooner than anticipated. Each game must be total victory.
“An X-ray poker machine was employed to read facedown cards and a rigged card-shuffling machine was also used in the plot, prosecutors say.”
Would love to know more about such a machine, if anyone has any insight. Are these developed underground? How expensive could they be?
If it can efficiently take in a deck of cards and deterministically return a rigged deck in a reasonable amount of time, I would be fascinated at how they solved that problem.
Many shuffle machines read all the cards, do the shuffle in software, then sort the cards accordingly. Here's a guy on Wired showing how to rig a poker game:
As someone who knows a bunch of card tricks myself, I have learned to resist the temptation to do an impromptu 'ambitious card' routine just because a deck of cards and an audience is in front of me before a poker game.
> There are _so many_ ways to cheat at poker that you should basically never play a private game outside of close friends.
Playing in an actual regulated casino or poker hall eliminates most of the technical risk of a fraudulent shuffle. The risk to the enterprise of losing their gaming license keeps things honest. Imagine the net effect of Bellagio’s shuffling machines or dealers being rigged.
But nothing can eliminate collusion of players. You’re best bet for that is your own self awareness. If your spidey sense is tripping, listen to it.
Thanks for the link. So basically, you are at a private game and if everyone has their phones out (and you are also an unsuspecting idiot), you are screwed.
Crazy that there is a USB port exposed outside the machine.
The card-shuffling machine is an obvious vulnerability.
But I'm provisionally calling BS on the "X-ray table." Based on (admittedly limited) experience with X-ray imaging, I don't believe that X-rays can read ink on playing cards. It would have to be a backscatter machine, which is even less discriminatory than a transmissive machine. Would need to see some evidence that this is possible.
If nothing else, the sheer size and bulk of such a machine renders the concept incredible. If I could build something like that, I wouldn't use it to cheat at cards, I'd sell it to the TSA!
Doesn’t sound that profitable to me. $7m is a lot of money. But not that much after building all of that custom tech, setting up a dedicated space, training and paying a whole bunch of people to run these games. Then whatever’s left over gets split between multiple crime families? Seems like a lot of work.
This is likely one part of a larger operation including blackmail opportunities, as others have mentioned.
However, don't overlook the value of $7 million in cash and cryptocurrency. For an organized crime operation that's a lot more valuable than $7 million in revenue from an actual business subject to taxes, business records, and bank tracking. This was an easy way to get millions of hard to trace dollars into accounts they could use.
Whenever some
group is said to have made/fined 1M out of their likely billions in revenue, someone will chime and say “that’s nothing”. But From a “department P&L perspective” yes, it is a lot of money!
Think about the crime families as making e.g. 50% money from construction corruption, 40% from drug sales, 5% from extortion… someone has to run the other smaller departments and that is a lot of money for that “Dept Head”. Also from the FBIs perspective they want to unravel conspiracies, often by yanking on one piece of yarn like this one.
That was my first thought, especially because they could get similar results with a marked deck. To me, this leads more credibility to it being part of a bigger operation.
All this potential jail time and reputation lost for $7 mil stolen over multiple years total??? And how many criminals split those winnings?? So the take home pay for an NBA HOF was like under $1 mil? Billups just signed an extension as an NBA head coach making well over that amount EVERY YEAR. Just sad imo
I think what happens is that many of these professional athletes grow up in communities and circumstances where it's just normal and expected to be "hustling," getting away with things, and avoiding the law. Wrong, but maybe understandable under those circumstances (poverty primarily).
But then you take that person out of the "hood," and give him a $1M/yr sports contract, and the mentality doesn't necessarily go away. It's still about the hustle. They might not stop to consider that they don't NEED to hustle anymore. And they're probably also surrounded now by grifters/"friends"/family who do still need/want to hustle, and essentially using these guys.
I can tell you right now that the kinds of dudes who play high level college ball and then go on to play professional ball were not hustling as kids. Many did grow up in unfortunate circumstances (this is less true as the years go on) however their talents generally were identified early and the track they were on was pretty clear.
I think the simpler answer is that some people are especially poor at risk vs reward analysis. Others enjoy the thrill of getting away with something. It's been 30+ years since Chauncey Billups has had to worry about money. I think your point about friends around them is very fair though. Lots of these guys have hangers on with their hands out and despite making lots of money in their careers they cant just give cash to everyone. So I can imagine them thinking "hey place a bet on my under for the next game because I'm going to go out early" seems like a low risk, not so evil way to put a few dollars in a friend's pocket.
Semi related: A couple of years ago a waste facility in Berlin measured increased levels of radio activity and traced it back to a restaurant where 13 cards laced with radioactive Iodine-125 were found:
Looks like near-IR of some sort but media calls everything x-ray since it's what people know. X-Rays would go through cards anyway. But you'd get nice pictures of peoples hands though, and cataracts after a night of play.
edit: now I think of it: if the cloth is thin enough you don't even need near-IR. Old fashioned IR camera's (those without any fancy filter) from the '00 showed though some relatively thin opaque synthetic material with a tiny IR source so ...
Yes, my conclusion as well. Especially with a bright enough IR source. The bones reference was as a bit sarcastic reference if they'd used x-rays but since nobody got seriously ill that did not happen..
I'm pretty sure it was just marks on the back of the cards that glasses/contacts then converted into an xray-like view, not any actual technology for seeing through the cards.
I looked up the term "X-ray table" but couldn't find anything relevant except very recent results about this specific news.
Sounds like FBI invented this very stupid/confusing name for the story when they could have used much something much better and clearer. X-ray really has nothing to do with this.
I remember as a kid seeing comics imported from the US that had ads for "x-ray specs". My first clue that the US advertising standards were not quite the same as other countries. Perhaps it's a similar idea to that?
I don't think it's literally "X-Rays". A couple years ago I saw an infrared transparent table being demonstrated as a product prototype by a distributor of magic props at a conference for professional magicians. I played with it a while because I thought it was quite remarkable and had never seen anything like it. The top surface was a half-inch thick hard black plastic which appeared completely opaque. It was perfectly convincing as it even had faux wood grain texturing on the surface. It looked for all the world like a table you'd see at IKEA or Target. I put my phone's flashlight on full brightness under it pointing up and couldn't see any light coming through, even shading the spot with my hand.
The table had a bunch of IR emitters pointed up built into the supports holding the table surface but they were at least two feet away and well-obscured into the table leg design by more normal-seeming smooth plastic I associate with being IR-transparent. Of course, if you suspect the use of IR, it's quite easy to detect with your camera phone. There was a camera hidden into the middle of the table supports looking up which transmitted the image wirelessly to a monitor nearby. My own face-down playing cards were visible on the camera plain as day, so it doesn't require special cards.
Interestingly, the magic distributor showing it wasn't giving out any info on who made it, what it cost or when it might be available. They just said they were "showing it to gauge interest" and might carry it at some point in the future. They're a large, long-time, reputable distributor of other people's products so I don't think they were involved in creating it. It hasn't made an appearance at subsequent conventions, so they must have decided it wouldn't be popular with magicians - which makes perfect sense. It would have been expensive and pretty technically involved for a limited-use magic prop. Good magicians have a many easier and cheaper ways to learn the identity of hidden cards :-). But the fact such a thick, textured, optically opaque surface could be IR transparent was pretty nifty.
As a former magician I was surprised to read the gang was using 'reader' cards (backs marked with ink visible to special glasses). No one uses those anymore as there are so many better ways to do the same thing. Seems like this gang was just into various tech toys and kind of lazy. In reality, once you control the environment, cards and have confederates in the game - cheating to win is trivial without any tech if you know what you're doing.
i wonder if we're not conflating xray with terahertz radiation perhaps? the former being used by a company called corrections one that produces a horrifying whole-body X-Ray of a prisoner to detect contraband (certainly not healthy.)
Terahertz radiation is used in airports with (arguable) safety and efficacy. the resolution is sufficient to read protest statements written under a passengers shirt in metallic ink. I wonder if it could read cards should they be specially crafted similarly.
This appears to be the / a source for the devices in question. It's worth reading over the technical details of how it all works. It's both terrifying and impressive. Cards can be identified using a barcode encoded on their thin edge from meters away.
This can be done with no tech at legit casinos. Just have a group of people with a predetermined “tell” system so that only the best hand in the group competes against the fish. In a 4 player game, with 3 teamplayers and 1 fish, thats 75% of games you’ll win. With zero tech.
Collusion in live casinos is a real thing for sure, but it's not exactly easy to pull off.
1) Most card rooms these days are 8 or 9 players, so your team would need to be at least 3, maybe 4 to really swing the odds in your favor.
2) You need a subtle but effective way to signal to your team the relative strength of your hand. Think baseball signals, but way more low key. "If I touch my watch, I have an Ace" etc. You'll probably want to mix these up across the hours or days of play.
3) Seats typically do open one at a time, and you want to trickle in your team to avoid suspicion. Higher stakes games, like $5-10, where there are thousands of dollars in front of most players are your goal, and good news is that these are typically more rare so there may be only one table running. Your teammates will have to wait it out, but once at the table, they can stay for hours.
4) You'll never know exactly what your targets are holding, but knowing that your teammates folded a flush draw for example can help you narrow your opponents cards to a smaller range of possibilities. You'll want to position your teammates around the table to create "squeeze" situations where two of the team can trap a target in between.
It takes some creative subtlety, but it can be very hard to impossible to detect collusion in live games.
* The casino takes a rake, so you lose money every hand, but you only win when the fish bets and loses. You’re also expected to tip the dealer
* Everything is on camera and dealers remember players, so there will be a lot of witnesses and evidence
* Seats often open one at a time, so you’d potentially lose money at other tables waiting to play together. Or, you all show up at once and ask to start a new table together, which would get suspicious.
* If you don’t know the fish’s cards, there’s still a chance you lose and lose big
> including members of La Cosa Nostra crime families,
I'm not sure if this reflects common usage in English but in Italian, Cosa Nostra is just a synonym for Mafia, not the name of a specific family. Also, in Italian it's never preceded by the article "La".
Cosa Nostra is a well defined organization operating in Sicily, that term isn’t used for other Mafias around Italy or other Sicilian criminal organizations. Among its past leaders you can find Bernardo Provenzano and Matteo Messina Denaro.
Sorry to be completely off-topic, but: I'm really reluctant to click on anything with these 'share IDs' and usually remove them from any link I share with anyone. I don't want to make it even easier for the platforms to build networks of associated accounts.
Yes, but in this case the blazers head office said they were going to search for a coach, and they also took input from Dame on what coaches he thought would be good for the team.
They didn't do any search at all, and just went straight to hiring Chauncey.
This partially contributed to Dame leaving - it also didn't help that Chauncey and Dame didn't quite get along (and also deciding to bench him in the last 10 games of the season to tank).
I'm honestly fine with players being hired as head coaches. Before looking into it I thought it was totally fine with Chauncey, especially given his track record as a leader on the Pistons and being a phenomenal classic point guard.
The main issue for me is just telling people you're going to do a search... and then not doing it.
Between all these recent gambling stories with coaches and players and the Kawhi thing I think I’m done with the NBA. The NBA’s gambling push has done nothing but gross me out. Greed unbridled. They saw the 1919 World Series and said “Let’s bet on this shit.”
This plus a lot of the soft greed. The insistence on a foul-centric game that leads to over 50% longer games, the ridiculous lack of investment on its own broadcast infra, the refusal to shorten the season (which is the longest in pro sports, longer than baseball's season, despite being less than half the games), and the consultant-driven management decisions - I have so much contempt for Adam Silver for making me hate the game I love most.
Everything Silver did grew revenue fourfold. By every metric, he’s a good commissioner. And yet I don’t know a single person in real life who actually likes the NBA. People I talk to find the NBA anywhere from inaccessible to an outright turnoff, due to load management (and player pay), tanking, a glacial pace of play, and so on. And so the only way I can engage the game is by listening to podcasts about it. Podcasts that now belch gambling ads at me constantly.
That is _nuts_ that the basketball season is longer than the MLB season. I never would have guessed that.
Let's go Jays! Looking forward to this World Series.
Also not a fan of the constant inundation with gambling ads even if they have literally no interest to me. Just seems like a net negative for a society that realized cigarette ads are bad, but can't seem to figure that out for alcohol or gambling.
At least the public education campaigns have started earlier, I definitely see ads talking about where to get help if you're having an issue fairly frequently.
Public education is one thing. But kids aren't protected from the ads and can't even have reasonable discussions about it. They're just being brainwashed around it. They see superstars and celebrities endorsing it all. Then all the language around it is "play" and "game" and "fun" and "win" which has very specific appeal to children. The prominence also makes it seem vetted and okay in a kids eyes (if it were bad, it wouldn't be in these places). I'd legitimately rather my kids see ads for smoking cigarettes. The conversations to be had around it are much much easier. Gambling and other psychological addictions are tougher to convey, but potentially very damaging nonetheless.
I understand, and am against the constant advertising of it.
But it's also important to remember just how successful the smoking psa campaign has been. Especially given the cost! Rates have fallen dramatically, just by telling people to "watch out!" in public spaces that reach young folks ears.
I don't think it's easy to attribute it to any specific part of the 'campaign' -- it's multifaceted. Making it illegal to smoke in public spaces may be the single most important part of reducing smoking in subsequent generations. There's also taxes. And removing it from media (we hardly see people smoke on camera unless it's for a 'period piece'). And just straight up treating it like a health issue.
We could be doing equivalent things for gambling (and we have in the past) so this erosion will have consequences for decades.
I stopped watching a couple of years ago but I assume they're still doing this: dealing out every game to a different network. You needed like 4 sports subscriptions just to be able to watch the season, sometimes even to watch the championship. For me that was the bridge too far.
All that mainly because some streaming services are willing to pay a more competitive amount of money for single (albeit national) weekly game broadcasts to sweeten their offering and get more subscribers.
Of course the NFL isn't gonna turn down $1B per year from Amazon for TNF. They get ~$2B from CBS and Fox each for the combined 10 Sunday games, then another couple billion from NBC for one Sunday night game, and another couple billion from ESPN for Monday night.
I think it's unlikely a single broadcaster would spend $12+B/year for exclusive rights to all games.
This interview with a former Turkish NBA player who protested things happening in China with simple statements on his shoes convinced me the NBA has no morals whatsoever.
What's the narrative? Human rights abuse is bad, speaking out about it got him fired? I have a hard time seeing some nafarious angle to what he talked about other than China doesn't want their shit called out.
NBA stopped being an interesting sports entertainment product to me by the year 2004. It has generated a handful of interesting narratives since, but not really enough to keep me engaged in the face of its enshitification.
Isn't legal gambling default profitable? The house is allowed to remove players who are good at games that involve skill and set the win ratio on games that don't (as specified in regulations).
Is this a case of bureaucracy forcing people into illegality?
This one would be an amazing film exploring both the intersection of tech and the NBA and the families involved too. It would be a stunning production if done with high quality in mind.
This is a common fallacy. Criminals often turn to crime because they're not very good at honest endeavors. Having failed to succeed on a fair playing field (hard), they victimize the weak and take advantage of others' naivety and trust (easy).
Almost nothing about crime is indicative of an intelligent mind that could be put to good use. It's a lot of lowlife midwits who are bitter they have no chance to compete or associate with real players.
Or they were raised with terrible and predatory culture. Screwing other people to get ahead is something that is frequently taught in childhood by parents and older role models that were also taught that mentality. We've all seen the Mafia movies and shows, these are family organizations where everyone's Aunts, Cousins, etc. is somehow "connected". There's a big uphill battle for a kid to come up in that environment and turn out like a model citizen. No excuses...
That seems like a lot of work. TFA said that they arrested 30 people, and got $7 million out of it. The fancy tech involved must have taken a good chunk of that.
It sounds like each of them could get at most a six-figure payday out of this. Which is no chump change, to be sure, but it sounds like many of them could have made as much money without the risk of going to jail just by getting a desk job.
Plus, there's no way a conspiracy that big is going to remain secret for long.
Maybe the expected to get away with it for longer and get a bigger payoff. But wow, it seems like a ton of effort.
All these comments assume that 30 million is _all_ the mob has made with these machines, and that the tech must be very expensive.
Usually when they pull out the big piles of drugs for the TVs, I assume that's the tip of the iceberg. So why is it that here, with four families involved, we think the only money they've made is what's been shown to us?
Also, x-ray tables, rigged card shufflers, and funny glasses don't necessarily sound like they're the most expensive things in the world.
So my guess is...
Combined with these fellas other hustles this was probably a nice chunk of change to bring in for a relatively low amount of work post initial set up. I mean, you're sitting around playing rigged poker with a bunch of millionaires and basketball players or whatever. Probably having some drinks, I'd imagine there's pretty ladies around, cigars, cocaine. Whatever.
Sounds more relaxing than extorting deli owners block by block like all those movies about the 70s show.
And the best part? The people you're robbing are probably much less likely to resort to violence as recourse.
X-Ray tables?? Seriously? Why are the feds looking at the gambling, and NOT the uncontrolled beaming of raw x-rays into a room full of people. There's GOT to be a law covering that...
Poker is a great game. There are so many aspects to it where you can go down a rabbit hole of strategy to improve your game - there's math, making decisions with incomplete information, deduction, reading people, all kinds of non-verbal communication, etc. Although there's chance involved, it is undoubtedly a skill game. The gambling is one of the unfortunate aspects, but it just doesn't play the same without some money involved. You can get around that a little bit with house games where everyone throws in $20 or small buy-in sit and go games at a casino.
Another game that's worth checking out if some of this sounds interesting but you really don't like gambling is "Blood on the Clocktower". It's a social logic and deduction party game. There's chance, bluffing, incomplete information, trying to figure out what other players have, etc. It's completely different, but it can scratch some of the same itches and it's a blast to play. My friends and I play it with our kids.
Yes. See 'Thinking in Bets' by Annie Duke for a good summary of why Poker is interesting / useful. World is Casino!
Blood on the Clocktower is great! My 15yo son is always trying to get a group of 8+ together for a game.
Came here to recommend Skull, a quick and easy to learn bluffing game, of which the designer said he was aiming for 'the feelings of poker without the money or luck' and I would say succeeded.
"the only victory condition is that you take money from other people" is also why I cannot be interested in day trading or cryptocurrency speculation, and will likely die penniless.
As a former poker pro: I hated gambling, I just was willing to do it when I had an edge and at poker I had an edge. I almost never gambled at anything else unless I was getting an edge from promotions. Still don’t.
There’s a approximately a 45% chance of losing money on any given day, even for the best players, but it decreases over a big sample. It’s definitely a marathon, not a sprint. That’s true of most things worth doing though.
It’s not lying when it’s part of the game, and kinda silly to view it that way. Is it lying by omission to not tell your chess opponent your strategy?
You are stuck sitting at a table, that’s true. But you choose when you’re there and the only rules really are basic civility so I never found that part difficult.
Money is the scoreboard. Everyone who sits down knows that. I’d argue it’s a lot less bad than how most tech companies make money these days. I’m not selling anyone’s data without them knowing about or understanding it. I’m just taking money from a guy who is trying to take my money. We both voluntarily put the money up to be taken and can stop doing so at any point.
This tracks. Not a pro here, but if you have a 5% edge at a $20 8-seat home game your EV is BEST CASE maybe $20/hour. Which is good for entertainment but not much else
Well, if you’re paying NL against people who don’t know what they’re doing, your win rate should be much higher. But yeah you can only take however much money is on the table so nobody makes a living playing the really low stakes.
Back in my day most cash games were limit hold’em (it’s been awhile) and you could pretty easily get to making $50 an hour beating up an amateurs. That was equivalent to about $90/hr today which is pretty great if you’re a young kid playing a game you enjoy.
It entirely depends on the vibes, the company, and the game, in my opinion.
At one job, we used it as a social time, 6 to 15 people from work (had to run two tables for those big nights) got together Saturday night, bbq'd some food, maybe watched a game on tv if there was a good one, and played a friendly game. Had a few drinks and enjoyed the company, while cards were played in the background.
Mildly competitive, but it was a flat $40 buy in with no more money allowed so the stakes were never incredibly high.
At another company, one guy in particular was the driver to get games going and he always wanted the stakes too high (for my taste) with lots of money moving around. I only went to two of those, wasn't my style.
With that mindset literally anything is unfun. Do you enjoy anything in particular that does not produce value? If so, you're also very likely losing something, stuck somewhere, etc.
Texas hold 'em is quite fun for casuals under these conditions:
The amount of money involved is small compared to the incomes of those playing, where most players have the expectation that they won't get money back and that is fine for the enjoyment they get out of the game, and the pot isn't big enough to be worth cheating about.
Everyone puts in the same amount of money.
You play texas hold 'em no limit with escalating blinds starting with a pretty big stack of chips, just like a real tournament.
When people are out, they can't buy back in.
You play until everyone is out, and the Top N players get some money back.
Lots of fun games involve lying, but you can play all night long and never tell a single lie and still win. Your only necessary verbs in a game of poker are "Call, raise, fold". Everything else is optional. If you bet big on a hand, you aren't saying anything about what is in your hand, lie or not. All the interpretation of what that means is in your opponents head. Lots of very good poker players don't talk about the hands at all.
My family quite commonly plays Texas Hold 'em for _no money at all_, everyone just gets a stack of chips.
Yeah this is really the best way to do it, I've even played friendly family games with candy or baked goods as the chips. Great fun! Problematic when you're munching on your bank though.
I'll share my experience. Playing a small pot poker game every now and then can be fun between friends. I've had a few groups of guys I'd go play poker with from time to time throughout the years.
The buy in would be something kind of low for everyone playing, like $20. No repeat buy-ins. So the loss if you didn't win wasn't much, and the payout wasn't exactly life changing but like take your spouse out to a nice date night with the winnings kind of thing. I'd often spend $20 or so doing some other kind of event with friends from time to time anyways, so its not like its some large amount being spent on entertainment. Paying for a batting cage for the evening or go-karts or renting a karaoke booth is also a 100% chance of losing money, should we also never do these things?
There's lots of deception to be played in tons of card games and board games, I don't know why poker would be held as something odd. Any game where you're holding a secret hand pretty much involves some amount of hidden motivations. One might also bluff in Catan or deceive their opponents in their strategy, should we also avoid playing that game? I'll try and hide my routes from everyone else when I'm playing ticket to ride, is that bad?
I'm stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours. Like any other board or card game. People are stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours playing tabletop role-playing games as well. To me, it was a chance to catch up with these friends, which at that point in time in our lives catching up at the poker game was kind of the big quarterly check-in with each other. I loved spending the time with these friends, sitting around the table and sharing life with each other, often also partaking in meals and drinks.
The victory condition is winning the pot, yes. Which, as mentioned, for at least in my games wasn't exactly some life changing amount of money one was taking from friends. We all went in knowing we'd probably be out the $20 in the end, and in the end the winner would have a small amount of money as a little bonus. And as mentioned, most of us would use it to take our significant others out on a date the next night.
I honestly don't see it as any different from spending a night playing any other board game or roleplaying game with friends, other than with a small bit of money involved as well. Obviously, other people go way harder with this gambling, which quickly just becomes an addition to the high of winning.
When I play games like this, I don't bet more than I can afford to lose - and paying $20 to sit at a table with friends playing poker is actually cheaper than going out to a bar with them.
> - the point of the game is to lie to friends and strangers
Are there any games with hidden information that you find interesting? Or any competitive games at all? Things like Werewolf, or Go Fish, or Settlers of Catan? For that matter, even in a game without hidden information, like chess, you're still trying to outwit your opponents.
> - you're stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours
I mean, you can leave if you're not having fun.
> - the only victory condition is that you take money from other people
Poker is so much fun with friends. It's not about winning, it's about hanging out and being a little competitive. It's a great way to hang out in real life for a few hours in today's online world.
I hate casino games but I enjoy poker. I don't play often anymore but I used to play online a lot, multi tabling.
There's something very satisfying about making thousands of decisions that have a positive expected value and seeing the math win throughout the variance, resulting in a proven edge.
Like anything in life, it's fun to get good at something and at some point it's beyond the math and theory, it feels like the cards become transparent at times, you just have a gut feeling that this hand, this person is trying to bluff. It can be based on what you know about them or just how fast they clicked or their bet size, but this guy wants you to fold so you'll call with almost nothing and still win.
But overall as a profession fuck poker, you don't contribute anything to the world.
Skiing is downright sisyphean. I'm only sort of joking - I live in Switzerland and since I started ski-touring, where you climb up the mountain and then ski down it, this feeling is even stronger.
But I think Sisyphus must have gotten at least some satisfaction for almost reaching the top.
paying money for a service and gambling are not totally different, especially if you more or less know your odds before entering. ./when I play blackjack (rarely) I understand I am more or less paying to play a game for enjoyment.
This is honestly an odd take. For most people the money is in exchange for having fun (there are pros and likely addicts though for which the money is the goal). I play in fantasy sports leagues and I pay into them. I don’t even care about winning the pot - I enjoy the game. The victory condition is having fun. Winning money is a bonus.
The point of the game isn’t to lie to friends. Is this how you see the point of chess or sports in general? Or any game where revealing your strategy would diminish your chances of winning?
I don’t think your comment is very HN typical, but it does indicate some other qualities you may have - not bad or good, but not typical.
I don't consider poker gambling (that would be something like craps which I also find fun). It is a skill you can build and not necessarily lose money. I also don't consider it lying when everyone at the table agrees to how the game is played. Playing 'good' poker requires folding a lot and it can get boring sitting at a table.
Poker is a lot like business distilled down. The player is managing resources and deciding where to use them while dealing with incomplete information.
You got many answers already, but a couple more points:
Poker doesn't require lying or table talk. Bluffing is rule-legal strategic deception expressed through betting. More like a feint in sports than cheating.
If "sitting at a table following rules" is the issue, that's true of most games. And formats vary: many are short and cash games are leave-anytime.
I dislike all gambling except poker. Anything that is purely chance and not within my control at all (roulette, sports betting) is dull and stressful. The odds are always against you. Poker has a big element of chance of course, but it’s really a game of skill. It hits a sweet spot of mathematics and social engineering that lights up a lot of neurons in a very engaging way.
When it comes to lying, in the real world I tend to be hypermoral and honest to a fault. It’s fun to have a game structure where dishonesty and aggression are acceptable.
No idea why people are disagreeing with this, you are not from NY and you do not know the history here. You do not do big business in NY with out the mob.
"One of the key figures involved in these deals has been the Russian-born, mob-linked businessman Felix Sater, who plead guilty to racketeering for his role in a $40 million stock fraud scheme involving the Genovese and Bonanno crime families49 and was convicted of stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass in New York."
"Despite their long association, Trump has repeatedly denied knowing about Sater’s criminal past, notwithstanding the fact that Sater widely represented himself as a Trump associate in business deals."
> Now, people play poker, and cheat, and they want the government to police their poker games and make sure they're fair.
No, if you personally run a poker game in your house and cheat your friends the government doesn’t care. The FBI isn’t going to be interested.
If you join the mafia and run an organized crime ring that operates poker games as a business which systematically defrauds people for large amounts of money and funnels the proceeds to organized crime through money laundering operations, the FBI will be interested.
If you look at this story and only see “some people cheated at a poker game” you’re missing the real story. This was a full on organized crime business operation
It's not even lunch yet and "the mafia should be allowed to build onto their tower of crimes in peace" is a take that I don't think that will be beat today.
The poker games were run by the mafia, who pulled in a lot of cash by luring and cheating suckers. I want the FBI to stop scams that funnel money to criminal organizations.
A lot of cash? It says “at least $7m” over 6 years across supposedly 4 crime families and how many people? They’d have been better off opening up a Jimmy John’s franchise.
If you run a Jimmy John’s, most of your customers will pay with credit cards. Everything runs through banks. You can’t launder that easily. It’s all traceable. It’s all taxable.
Run a poker operation and you can get your marks to give you crypto, cash, or small transfers.
$7 million in pure cash and crypto proceeds from a poker game is a lot more valuable than $7 million in revenue from a sandwich shop for an organized crime operation.
We’re supposedly talking about 4 major crime families, it wouldn’t be one McDonalds it would be dozens and dozens. And all legal.
Nothing about this story makes sense other other than as yet another headline to try to get people talking about something other than Epstein.
Did illegal gambling take place? I’m sure. Were 4 different crime families investing significant resources to take home barely $1m/year? I’m extremely skeptical and given this is coming from Kash “I always look like I just did a line of coke” Patel, I’d say it’s more likely than not we’re getting incomplete, if not bad information
I’m expecting some pardons will shape the expectation that this all could have been avoided with strategic political donations. In this era, what would you accept as a substitution for accountability?
That's not the part that's bad. I don't care whether they cheat or not. I don't want the government policing what is and isn't fair in a poker / NBA / etc game.
I think arresting people for cheating legitimizes backroom / mafia gambling. All the other rings (and those left from this one) can say "Look, those other guys got arrested. The law protects you. We don't want that to happen to us. Our game is definitely fair." Of course, they too are cheating.
The only reason the FBI cares here is probably because one of the victims had pull. If you or I get cheated, the FBI won't care about that.
> I don't want the government policing what is and isn't fair in a poker / NBA / etc game.
Operating a business that defrauds people is the domain of government enforcement.
I think you’re trying to reduce this to some sort of small scale friendly poker game between friends. It was not. It was an organized crime business operation that was systematically committing fraud.
Fraud is illegal and within scope of government enforcement.
The raison d'etre for the offense of fraud is to protect commerce.
The state / society needs to enforce a basic level of trust for Business A to buy widgets from Business B, and for Customer C to be employed, etc.
Betting on sports / poker / etc. is not part of that. Nobody is creating anything of value when you spin the roulette wheel. At best, the house wins and most players lose... and that is a harm to society. At worst, the house cheats or some subset of players cheat, and most players lose... and that too is a harm to society. (Edit: At worse worst, it leads to violence, extortion, etc...)
Gambling does not deserve the legitimacy of being policed.
> I think arresting people for cheating legitimizes backroom / mafia gambling. All the other rings (and those left from this one) can say "Look, those other guys got arrested. The law protects you."
Disagree, this case demonstrates the exact opposite -- you think your underground game is legit because there's celebrities playing? Think again, it's a far more sophisticated scam operation than you could imagine.
> The only reason the FBI cares here is probably because one of the victims had pull.
Again, I doubt it. Likely it's because the mafia is involved, and according to the indictment "the defendants and their co-conspirators used threats of force and violence to secure the repayment of debts from illegal poker games."
I think the comment goes more in the direction: “previously playing poker was a totally private thing, didn’t cost me a dime, now part of my taxes is used for that”
I'd appreciate it if the police could help stop cheating in my kids' soccer game as well. One of those brats keeps pretending to be injured! Lock him up.
you're right, they should outlaw gambling as a business because it's inherently predatory, rigged ("the house always wins" isn't just a cute phrase) and has addiction issues that disproportionately impact the poor
This scheme doesn’t really make sense. Once you’ve convinced a wealthy person to play at your underground poker table, you’ve already won - just play better poker than them, ultra wealthy fish don’t have time to learn to play perfect poker and you do. Trying to extract slightly more money per hand via x ray tables etc kills the golden goose and doesn’t even necessarily increase total winnings, since it makes you win faster but doesn’t increase the amount the fish are willing to lose to have a good time.
“just play better poker” like that’s an easy thing to do in a game of chance and incomplete information, with variance having years or decades long tails. not to mention it’s an unsolved game, so “better” poker doesn’t even really have a set definition and depends on tons of variables. and they literally knew what hole cards were coming - that’s vastly more of an edge than playing “better poker” than someone.
Besides the fact they were often targeting pros - this was reported on and known by LA area pros for at least two years now. why the FBI decided to act now is weird to me. I can’t stress enough that in the pro scene this was common knowledge. years old podcast clips are coming up talking about it.
source: https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/breaking-news/article/professio...
Some professional poker player told me this anecdote: he was playing at a table with a celebrity. He quickly noticed he has a tell (he did something with his chips when he had a powerful hand or was bluffing, don't remember), and half the table also noticed the same or similar tells. They proceeded to clean his stash.
At the table statistics matter between pros, but if you are not aware of your flaws, you might as well play with your cards face up.
This sounds similar to an article I read about major league pitchers, who must learn to avoid "tells" for the pitch they are about to throw, while opposing teams pour over video of their previous outings looking for those tells.
Some pitchers even said they would deliberately perform a "tell" that opponents had identified then throw a different pitch.
In the exact same way, in cricket there is a style of bowling called legspin and bowlers who use that style have a particular type of ball called a “googly” which turns in the opposite direction to a normal legspin ball. Because legspinners sometimes have to do weird wrist contortions to get this ball to work, batsmen practise trying to “pick” this ball by noticing these tells (mainly whether they can see the back of the bowler’s hand).
So really crafty legspinners sometimes try to develop two versions of the googly: one with a deliberate tell and one without a tell.
Here’s an example of probably the greatest legspin bowler of all time doing exactly this, although with a different ball (a “flipper” or topspin ball) not a googly https://youtu.be/DlyG5wnW7I0?si=O463NAdV6NAAB3cG
Same thing happens in football with audibles. I wonder how many teams are feeding videos like these to AI and asking it to find patterns that might be tough for humans to see. If an AI thinks there's a pattern, verifying shouldn't be too hard either.
My personal favorite example of this in football
https://youtube.com/watch?v=g4SEPufzG7s
Legendary variation from pro tennis between to HoF players, https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/tennis/andre-agassi-bori...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcoB3G2Gj7w
The FBI is going to take time building up the case, flipping people, getting recordings, and trying to get as many people involved to not just stop the games but hopefully take down the entire crime families involved. LA Poker pros will start talking as soon as they suspect something fishy.
They almost certainly already have done much of this if they’re going public now. What makes it to the media in the beginning is only ever the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
> They almost certainly already have done much of this if they’re going public now.
Normally I'd agree, but this administration is known for pushing to release public distractions whenever they can.
Exactly. Structures, men behind, organizations involved, networks and other crimes indicated or discovered for example money laundering, betting.
It takes time to build a case. Some laws need people working together and a one time event testing a new table and accidentally having lots of cash in the bags as well as so-called famous people showing up can simply happen by chance.
It is complicated.
I'm not sure I believe this. It seems you can just walk into one of these places and roll the whole place, confiscate electronics, and make all the necessary connections fairly quickly. These games aren't a secret and never have been.
I don't like the private (illegal) scene because it's killed action in casinos and games I used to love playing in. The risk to me of breaking the law, being robbed/scammed, or worse is not worth it to play in these games and I wish they'd go away.
Even the mafia angle - the NY families must have fallen a long way if they're resorting to high profile but ultimately petty scams like this. This seems like PR for the FBI and nothing more, like I said up thread this has been common knowledge for years.
> NY families must have fallen a long way
I spent a fun few hours a couple years back deep diving into what has become of the old-school "Goodfellas"-style mob these days. Looking into both media reports as well as posts by 'mob fans' - niche forums of those who obsessively follow mob and mob adjacent activities via open-source intel methods - I got the sense the traditional Italian mob families have indeed shrunk to a smaller, sadder version of what they once were due to being eclipsed by new, different kinds of organized crime.
Guys who are known "made men" getting out of prison after doing 10-15 and then ending up doing relatively nickel and dime crimes like daylight armed robbery of a jewelry store themselves for lack of enough income. 25 years ago guys like that wouldn't normally do that stuff themselves. Others have even sunk to basically LARPing being old-school mobsters on social media.
It seems there are two key drivers behind the decline: the real money in organized crime has shifted to new kinds of activities which scale better and can grow much larger. That's attracted new competitors. Some are smarter, some more brutal and some which are both. There's also an aspect that these new, bigger opportunities are far more complex, long-term and can also require successfully operating legitimate businesses as one necessary component. I guess it's not surprising. Even illicit industries undergo accelerating change over time. The old crime families still exist and can certainly still be dangerous - they're just no longer the top of the criminal food chain in terms of earnings.
> the NY families must have fallen a long way if they're resorting to high profile but ultimately petty scams like this
The presence of petty scams does not indicate they have stopped their large scale operations. The Mafia has always done scams like this; it's basically the bush leagues to train for the really big stuff.
It's all petty crimes. I've known a handful of low-level "members" and they were all morons (imo) running the most absurd scams.
Things like: "Hey I'm organizing a trip to Vegas. $1000 / head. Great hotel, meals paid, etc. etc."
Then the organizer has the great misfortune of being "robbed" of all the money he collected by a masked assailant.
Maybe the higher level guys were were brighter, but I kind of doubt it.
Matt Berkey called out this exact game a couple years ago: https://x.com/RTNBA/status/1981433175390687603
The FBI is also struggling for legitimacy at this point in history
This did strike me as quite a small scale crime for all the attention it's getting. I guess the notable part is using a couple celebrity athletes to recruit marks for rigged high-stakes poker games. If you think about it, poker games don't scale up into a truly big money. After paying off everyone involved, maybe they clear a few hundred grand in cash? That's chump change in modern organized crime.
Name a decade without a major FBI scandal
The difference it that what used to be a decade-defining major FBI scandal is more like monthly in the current administration.
Name a less competent FBI director ever.
I think they’re also doing good investigations into local crime rings that the states and prior administrations didn’t touch
The political prosecution vendettas are dumb but here in LA they are disrupting “Armenian” crime rings
I understand the "need" for cheating but it does seem like overkill the way they cheated, at least as described. They've already got colluders, and then the auto shuffler reads the cards, and then they've ALSO got the contact lenses? Just some marked cards would have been sufficient. And then the rare time the fish catches up after being behind is your "let them win a hand and get traction". It just seems like they really went too far to control every part of the hand
What's the increased risk of cheating more?
Once you're cheating and colluding you are in danger of going to jail, and it's not clear that more cheating makes it more likely to be caught.
How could more cheating avenues not equal a more likelihood of being caught?
Car analogy--I never had to take my 1976 Olds Cutlass in because the key fob got out of sync or because the touchscreen got fried or the electronic power steering module shorted or... or .. or
More points of failure = more failure.
Is a 76 olds the car to use to make a point about reliability?
Not regarding the paintjob, certainly.
Perhaps those were different iterations of the technique over time. Start with marking cards to identify face cards, then move on to x-ray table.
>“just play better poker” like that’s an easy thing to do in a game of chance and incomplete information
you just need to beat the table, you don't need to become an over-average pro.
that decades long tail you mentioned is for pros chasing profitability in tournaments -- it's a much shorter tail when you're playing fish in setups.
being better at poker than the guy at the table who is good at making money isn't a big leap, it's what sharks and hustlers have been aiming at for hundreds of years.
You're illustrating why the phrase I am nitpicking is silly, and why poker is somehow still profitable even after the boom of 20+ years ago. What is the definition of "beating the table?" Is it winning? Because I promise you, that's a poor definition. You can be playing perfectly great poker and get slaughtered, you can play terrible poker and win. Look at the career of Phil Helmuth, for instance (joke, I'm joking). Playing live poker, you're very unlikely to get a large enough sample size to have a close to 100% confidence you're actually beating the game. You're even less likely to get a large enough sample from a single table/group of players to know either. And like I said up thread - what is "good" or "optimal" or the highest expected value play can change drastically depending on information. Poker is a game of incomplete information, and you can conjure tons of scenarios where folding something like a pair of Aces is correct before the flop, even though many people who have a shallow understanding of the game or haven't studied it deeply would say you should never do that (for instance, in a double or nothing tournament, where half the table cashes and half doesn't, folding AA with a large chip lead to an all in from a certain stack size is the correct play and happens surprisingly often).
Or like, say you're against a "fish" that goes all in preflop with exactly J7 offsuit and nothing else, no matter how big his stack is, because that's their lucky hand or something. You're not playing as profitably as possible if you lack that knowledge, and if you somehow have that knowledge, there are tons of hands you play there that you normally never would and would appear to others without that information as playing "bad."
It's a deeply complex game people try to trivialize. I've been studying for about 20 years and every year that goes by I think I know less than I did the year before. And I'm just talking no limit hold'em right now - there are tons of variants that all have their own areas of study, and that's not even to get into weird live game areas of theory like tells and stuff (which is not as important as people tend to think).
> it's a much shorter tail when you're playing fish in setups
A lot of rich people know more about poker than middle-income scrubs. You don't want to find out the fish you're chasing was a shark all along. The point here is to turn a game a chance into a profit center, suggesting they just do it legitimately missed the point and assumes the scammers themselves have the time or talent to become good enough to reliably fleece people legitimately. It also means you have to vet the people you invite, rather than confidently turning out the pockets of scrubs and capable players alike.
People making most money _playing_ poker are really really good players that get invited to games with the wealthy people. This takes both poker skills, social skills (being entertaining) and potentially doing some occasional "fun" (incorrect) plays.
They are not the best poker players in the world. Best poker players have the misfortune of not being invited to "fun" millionaire games
If you have enough of an edge, the variance is really not that big. The only reason to have high-tech cheating when you already have a table full of fish - is if the people running the scheme are not very good at poker
Why FBI decided to act now is that they probably ripped off the wrong person...
> why the FBI decided to act now is weird to me
Someone didn't pay a bribe on time?
Or the wrong person lost
think of the spotlight the NBA had because of opening night! Someone in the FBI/admin wanted this news to drop right when the NBA was trying to make a splash and tarnish their new season
You can spend the time to learn the odds, and play the odds. Most people don't have even that basic skill.
You are ignoring why people play the game: reading people and avoiding being read (lies, misdirection). I would predict your job is technical rather than people oriented. There's plenty of other card games where learning the odds matters, but poker has a bit more depth.
I read a theory that the poker winnings were not the scam.
The scam was that the criminal element would HELP the NBA players cheat at poker, and then blackmail them with that info to change the outcomes of NBA games, which they were betting on, from which they could derive greater scale of winnings.
Or the players were already jammed up in gambling losses and were then offered to play in these games to forgive the losses.
imo that doesn't make sense. All the online betting platforms will cut off the sharps. If you are net profitable and you make too much money from them, you will get banned.
Well first of all, organized crime does not need an online platform to profit off of fixing professional sports games. There are still plenty of bookies running around offering better odds than draftkings. Though, if they really wanted to, they could make smaller bets under hundreds of accounts.
There is also the very strong possibility that they are colluding with the online betting platforms in some way. Coupled with the fact that any difference-maker athlete is getting a huge salary, and blackmail/extortion becomes your best option to getting one on your side.
Organized crime operations have no problem getting a lot of people involved in their schemes. They wouldn't use one account. They'd spread the bets over a large number of people and accounts and also possibly sell the information.
Yeah, that would limit the scale if they were betting against the platforms.
However, if you assume they were feeding the information to the platforms...
... or if you assume that they control the platforms...
First, people who are banned from online bookies use "horses" or other not-banned players to place bets for them.
Second, the FBI is targeting real world Mafia members, who will typically be the bookies taking action from others. If they know in advance, through blackmail or collusion that an NBA player or coach will throw a game, they can exploit this versus their entire betting pool for massive wins against the suckers placing bets with them.
You're focusing on a game with player vs. house odds, like a casino. Online betting platforms do offer some of these games but they are clearing markets for gambling; they manipualte the odds to arbitrage wagering and take a cut regardless of the outcome. It's all about volume. If you make a huge wager on a long-odds parlay, they no longer look the same for the next (or other side) of that specific (or components of the) wager.
An organization could place the bets through different people each time.
with that level of sophistication I’m sure they’re not using the inside info to place bets on retail platforms.
The do use retail platforms, just like the same orgs send out armies with cloned cards to use retail banking infra.
5d-poker.
You don't want to extract more money per hand, you want to build up the fish (check the text message screenshots in the article) and then strike at the right point. The x rays remove the luck from those big hands.
Exactly. You want zero risk asymmetric payouts.
> Once you’ve convinced a wealthy person to play at your underground poker table, you’ve already won - just play better poker than them, ultra wealthy fish don’t have time to learn to play perfect poker and you do.
You would be surprised at how good some very wealthy people are at poker. There is a lot of variance in the game and they don't want that. In fact what they want is _exactly_ wealthy people who are quite good at poker because they make big bets and you can reliably bust them out on _one hand_ if you set it up properly after playing a fair game all night. And the great thing about that is that they feel like the night overall was fair and fun, because it was. You just cheat them on one or two hands at the most.
People who are bad at poker can also be quite difficult to reliably take money from fairly because they play randomly and sometimes win huge pots out of complete luck. For one thing, they are near impossible to bluff out of hands, so you end up having to fold a lot more than normal because you can only play with strong hands against them. If you are interested in making a lot of money, you certainly want those strong hands more often than normal.
The trick isn't winning when the celebrity is at the table, it is in getting the celebrity to the table, then keepong the victim there.
It's not about winning mote on each hand. It's about keeping the target happy as money drains away. And that was their aim.
By controlling the whole game, they were able to psychologically manipulate the situation. The target was at tbe table with someone they respected. Saw others win and lose large amounts of money. Sometimes won themselves.
Ooooh you use all these tools in order to _control_ the game, so that is is as fun as possible. So the victim still loses, as they would without the tools, but now they're happy as it happens.
Poker requires skill but there's still a major amount of chance involved. Removing the chance and conspiring against a single player turns the game into a show. You can set up cheap wins and expensive losses. It doesn't really matter how well the other players win or lose because they are all on the same team, you're the only one actually losing any money.
I remember as a kid, I'd play battleship with my siblings. I was really good at it, they were not. They hated when it was obvious that I let them win but also hated when I beat them badly so I found a way to make the game go longer. Often we'd play on a glass table and I'd "drop" a piece so I could peek under the table and see where their pieces were. I could get a hit and then miss many follow up shots to slowly destroy their ship and give them more time to find and destroy mine. They'd gloat over their hard-fought win but I'd just smile and beat them for real next round. I could have done this without peeking but I wanted to make sure I didn't accidentally play too well.
Exactly, to a pro poker player a celebrity or athlete looks like an easy target. Someone with a lot of money, likes to play for fun, and doesn't have the same skills as a pro. They are at the table to bait the pros. But now the problem is you need those same players to win in order to extract any money from the game, hence the high-tech cheating.
> just play better poker than them
That's a big "just".
They were using sports celebrities as the draw to the table, not expert poker players.
Cheating at poker also looks less threatening than playing against an expert, counterintuitively. Someone who cheats can pull out some big wins on some bets that look statistically bad. The target can see this and think the other party is playing poorly (betting on non-obvious hands) but simply getting lucky.
Contrast this with a shrewd expert poker player who will be easier to spot.
They want the target to think the celebrity sports figure is just getting lucky on bad bets, not that they're an expert poker shark who's going to take all of their money.
EDIT: Here's a 2 year old YouTube video from before all of this confirming this https://youtu.be/G-TKR5ca5jI?t=1790 (Skip to 29:50)
Having the cheating poker players look bad is a key part of the scam. It tricks the other players into coming back and betting big.
> Once you’ve convinced a wealthy person to play at your underground poker table, you’ve already won - just play better poker than them,
This is why in the book Molly's Game [0], the author mentions explicitly that she didn't want professionals in her game.
This b/c her game was seen as a game between "regular/amateur" players who just happened to be famous and/or have a lot of money. This was also DESPITE poker professionals both asking her to play AND offering to give her a stake of their winnings.
Granted, certain players (e.g. Tobey Maguire) were MUCH better than the other players but it seems that didn't matter as long as poker wasn't their primary source of income.
0 - https://amzn.to/4o05BFi
> just play better poker than them
You really don't understand the mind of fraudsters and criminals. The reason they do what they do is because they don't want to "just be better at X than Y" and spend the effort for that, they want to take the shortcut and they think they've found the best shortcut considering their situation.
Once you start to look at what people are doing with that perspective, things will start to make more sense.
Wealthy people aren't dumb - they don't join games where the odds are tilted against them. In these high-stake private games they can usually demand and set the rules like shallow stacks (100BB), enforced straddles, raising stakes after a loss, button games etc. that remove the GTO / poker element and make the game more gambly.
Boring pros who play these games straight up and don't "give action" don't get invited back.
This is how you can have some of the best poker players like Tom Dwan get absolutely wiped out while playing against whales in Macau
If you want to see a more recent example of this - the amateur whale Monarch recently took on one of the best cash game heads up players Bjorn Lee. I won't spoil the result because it's highly entertaining and demonstrates how the game works at these stakes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCd7giB9s5U
The self made ultra rich are quite smart on average.
I doubt the same is true of these Cosa Nostra and NBA guys.
You don't need to play better poker. You can just have multiple people on the same team at the same table and communicating, vastly increasing your odds of your team having the best hand.
My understanding is that collusion is rampant in poker.
If you get introduced to a 'friendly' game of 5 players there's a good chance that these guys are signalling to each other and basically folding to whoever's got the best hand. You can't win against that. Even if you have 2 new players showing up at a table existing players could worry about collusion.
If you don't have the fancy trappings those guys did it is almost impossible to catch people colluding in poker.
I think it's revealing of how diminished the la costa nostra is. This is such trivial work and, yet, this was a multi-family operation.
Highlighted perfectly in The Sopranos when they try to extort a Starbucks, it's a different world.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rtnSe0eKmdI
Diminished? More like, matured into white collar crime. There's no need to murder people on the street any more, that kind of dirty work is left to some random Southern American cartels, and the white collar crime brings in more than enough profit while also being way less risky should the feds catch up on it.
I don't know if I buy that. If we were to put this in white collar terms, we'd all be questioning Tim Cook if he decided that selling ice cream was a great resource allocation decision.
What business would you take your organized crime organization into for maximal returns?
Just stick everything in the S&P 500?
I'd get dirt on the sitting president, then leverage him to make decisions with obvious market implication. Examples: give me a day's notice that the federal government is going to invest in a dinky mining company, or tariffs are coming on foreign electronics... except next week <these companies> are exempt. You gotta believe people on the inside are making fortunes as the markets continue to make big swings up & down.
> You gotta believe people on the inside are making fortunes as the markets continue to make big swings up & down.
Yeah but that's friends of the emperor, not organized crime (although granted, the distinction between these two groups is getting smaller by the day).
Organized crime? That money is literally everywhere. Restaurants, real estate, cars, the stock markets... the only place you'll rarely spot it is, ironically, gambling, way too many chances of getting caught on a paper trail. A lot of it is also invested in art pieces stored in one tax haven/freeport or another, really easy to launder money or evade taxes.
Probably going into crypto, the federal government even encourage it now.
> More like, matured into white collar crime.
Honestly this is the first “advanced” mafia scheme I’ve heard of in a while.
Last time I heard about a mafia crime it was a very sloppy hit that sounded more like what you hear from teenagers in Chicago shooting at each other.
Though tbf it could easily have always been like that and I’m just blinded my media bias about a group of people I’ve never known form a time I’ve never known.
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Sometimes the wealthy person is the shark, and you're the fish...
In Molly's Game, Tobey Maguire was the celebrity shark. (In the movie he was played by Michael Cera). He could easily have been a professional poker player, but he makes way more from acting and he prefers the easy play in private games.
No need to learn; just hire players who are better than the fish and split the profits??? Once it is your shuffler, I could cobble together a Raspberry Pi to light a slightly different wavelength LED when it dealt them two pictures and would need to concentrate to lose enough to get all their money.
It seems like so much work for relatively so little payoff. There’s a lesson here for non criminals also.
> In what sounds like an Ocean's Eleven film plot, prosecutors say these "unwitting" victims were cheated out of at least $7m (£5.25m) in poker games - with one person losing at least $1.8m.
Definitely a lot of work but that seems like a half decent payday to me.
More than 30 arrests, and the scheme dates back to as early as 2019.
The article says "A cut OF THE PROFITS went to those who helped in the plot," implying that the $7m wasn't truly profit but actually revenue? The writing is unclear to me. I'm not sure if this is before paying out to 30+ people over several years, or after, but article implies before, that it's how much was taken from victims. That I think makes the difference on whether or not it was a decent payday. The profit would be how much supposedly went to fund their other operations, which the article does allege some went to.
There may be more victims. I doubt it’s based on a thorough audit of accounting, just those that put in a complaint. But how do you verify a complaint?
Honestly I imagine a lot of this just became chasing yet another thrill that net you maybe tens of thousands of dollars. I could totally see why someone would be in to that. Most hobbies drain your bank account after all lol
Same reason there are people out there who shoplift even though they don’t need what they’re grabbing. The thrill of the act.
I can definitely imagine a scenario it was worth it (a) just to fund them getting to hang out with NBA players, and/or (b) make connections with other wealthy folks in ways that are beneficial towards other ends.
And that they just didn't want to operate it at a loss.
An nba coach was one of 30 people indicted in the scheme. He made about 5m a year at his straight job.
$5M is a lot unless you have a crippling gambling addiction.
It’s not so much the absolute amount as the comparative one.
Just extorting Chauncey Billips seems like a better ROI than the whole caper if you’ve got some hold on him.
Extortion risks exposing you in a way that quietly taking their money through cheating at cards does not. It’s also strikes me as a far more serious crime but I could be wrong.
I was replying to the premise that his involvement was under duress for gambling debts. If so it’s extortionate either way.
Wasn’t there just a pair of people that walked $100 million euros out of the Louvre?
The profit from a scheme like this would likely be in the high tens of millions of dollars.
The poker game itself in high-roller situations could be a million plus per night depending on the stakes.
Then there's the whole "you owe the Mafia" angle with NBA players and coaches. It's a pretty clear line to the Mafia making tens of millions of dollars on rigged NBA games.
Seems pretty clear to me the risk and excitement of the scheme was probably a big part of the appeal for these people, as much as the total cash amount they took home.
They were also targeting pros, not merely wealthy players: https://x.com/OnlyFriends_Pod/status/1981379130190156129?s=4...
But you are already breaking the law running an underground poker game.
Most criminals have a specific type of cleverness, but not intelligence. If they were smart people, they wouldn't do the crimes in the first place.
I dealt with a low-tech breach at one of the hospitals I worked for. The criminal worked in HIM, and used paper and pencil to note specific info about specific types of patients. Since they worked in HIM, it was expected for them to view many medical records in a day and no app detects paper/pencil, so quite clever so far.
Ultimately, they used this info to file false tax returns to steal the refunds.
The problem? They filed 881 false tax returns annnnnnd used the same address for all of them. DOH.
They were busted/arrested and off to jail they went.
Clever, right until the end, then abysmally stupid.
HIM = Health Information Management for anyone else wondering.
If they were smart people, they wouldn't do the crimes in the first place.
There are tons of smart people committing crimes. The levels of Intelligence, success, luck, greed, and morals can co-exist in every possible combination within one human.
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The intelligent ones don't get caught, or at least find the right loopholes to make their obvious crime technically legal.
> don't have time to learn to play perfect poker
Probably don't have time to play so many hands with you that the better player is statistically guaranteed to win, either.
Organized crime groups are rarely interested in "the long game". They work on the assumption that the party will end sooner than anticipated. Each game must be total victory.
“An X-ray poker machine was employed to read facedown cards and a rigged card-shuffling machine was also used in the plot, prosecutors say.”
Would love to know more about such a machine, if anyone has any insight. Are these developed underground? How expensive could they be?
If it can efficiently take in a deck of cards and deterministically return a rigged deck in a reasonable amount of time, I would be fascinated at how they solved that problem.
Many shuffle machines read all the cards, do the shuffle in software, then sort the cards accordingly. Here's a guy on Wired showing how to rig a poker game:
https://youtu.be/JQ20ilE5DtA
There's a device that can scan the _sides_ of specially marked cards and tell you the complete deck order.
For the shuffling machine there is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20ilE5DtA
There are _so many_ ways to cheat at poker that you should basically never play a private game outside of close friends.
If you wanted to spend a year or so practicing, you can learn how to do false shuffles and cuts, bottom deals, cold stack a deck etc...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3Mu7jocdew This guy was a professional card cheat for decades before going honest.
As someone who knows a bunch of card tricks myself, I have learned to resist the temptation to do an impromptu 'ambitious card' routine just because a deck of cards and an audience is in front of me before a poker game.
> There are _so many_ ways to cheat at poker that you should basically never play a private game outside of close friends.
Playing in an actual regulated casino or poker hall eliminates most of the technical risk of a fraudulent shuffle. The risk to the enterprise of losing their gaming license keeps things honest. Imagine the net effect of Bellagio’s shuffling machines or dealers being rigged.
But nothing can eliminate collusion of players. You’re best bet for that is your own self awareness. If your spidey sense is tripping, listen to it.
Regulated casinos take a certain % of every pot and players don't want to give up $5 or $10 a pot to pay for regulations/oversight/etc.
The rigged card-shuffling machine method is documented in this recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ20ilE5DtA
Thanks for the link. So basically, you are at a private game and if everyone has their phones out (and you are also an unsuspecting idiot), you are screwed.
Crazy that there is a USB port exposed outside the machine.
> you are at a private game and if everyone has their phones out
I play private games. At any reasonable stakes electronics have been banned from the room for years now.
The card-shuffling machine is an obvious vulnerability.
But I'm provisionally calling BS on the "X-ray table." Based on (admittedly limited) experience with X-ray imaging, I don't believe that X-rays can read ink on playing cards. It would have to be a backscatter machine, which is even less discriminatory than a transmissive machine. Would need to see some evidence that this is possible.
If nothing else, the sheer size and bulk of such a machine renders the concept incredible. If I could build something like that, I wouldn't use it to cheat at cards, I'd sell it to the TSA!
Couldn't the cards have x-ray opaque ink (like with bismuth trioxide)?
That could be a good point, I suppose. Iron-based ink could have a similar effect. I'll have to see if there's a deck of cards around here to X-ray.
We tried this long ago at a university, the cards we had were entirely invisible to the x-ray.
I think the 'x-ray' table in the article works with IR cameras and illuminators under the table, and tablecloth that is slightly IR transparent.
Maybe it doesn't return rigged orders, but records the order of the output deck with high speed cameras.
Slight of hand? You put the deck to be sorted at the "in" side, the machine shuffles it, then it ejects a different rigged deck.
Doesn’t sound that profitable to me. $7m is a lot of money. But not that much after building all of that custom tech, setting up a dedicated space, training and paying a whole bunch of people to run these games. Then whatever’s left over gets split between multiple crime families? Seems like a lot of work.
This is likely one part of a larger operation including blackmail opportunities, as others have mentioned.
However, don't overlook the value of $7 million in cash and cryptocurrency. For an organized crime operation that's a lot more valuable than $7 million in revenue from an actual business subject to taxes, business records, and bank tracking. This was an easy way to get millions of hard to trace dollars into accounts they could use.
Whenever some group is said to have made/fined 1M out of their likely billions in revenue, someone will chime and say “that’s nothing”. But From a “department P&L perspective” yes, it is a lot of money!
Think about the crime families as making e.g. 50% money from construction corruption, 40% from drug sales, 5% from extortion… someone has to run the other smaller departments and that is a lot of money for that “Dept Head”. Also from the FBIs perspective they want to unravel conspiracies, often by yanking on one piece of yarn like this one.
as others have speculated, the real money was probably in blackmail and rigged sports betting.
That was my first thought, especially because they could get similar results with a marked deck. To me, this leads more credibility to it being part of a bigger operation.
Well it’s kind of an annuity. A million a year ain’t nothing for a small operation.
But yeah they surely make much more selling fentanyl.
All this potential jail time and reputation lost for $7 mil stolen over multiple years total??? And how many criminals split those winnings?? So the take home pay for an NBA HOF was like under $1 mil? Billups just signed an extension as an NBA head coach making well over that amount EVERY YEAR. Just sad imo
These guys are competitors. They crave it. Gambling is a way they scratch that itch.
I think what happens is that many of these professional athletes grow up in communities and circumstances where it's just normal and expected to be "hustling," getting away with things, and avoiding the law. Wrong, but maybe understandable under those circumstances (poverty primarily).
But then you take that person out of the "hood," and give him a $1M/yr sports contract, and the mentality doesn't necessarily go away. It's still about the hustle. They might not stop to consider that they don't NEED to hustle anymore. And they're probably also surrounded now by grifters/"friends"/family who do still need/want to hustle, and essentially using these guys.
It is sad.
I can tell you right now that the kinds of dudes who play high level college ball and then go on to play professional ball were not hustling as kids. Many did grow up in unfortunate circumstances (this is less true as the years go on) however their talents generally were identified early and the track they were on was pretty clear.
I think the simpler answer is that some people are especially poor at risk vs reward analysis. Others enjoy the thrill of getting away with something. It's been 30+ years since Chauncey Billups has had to worry about money. I think your point about friends around them is very fair though. Lots of these guys have hangers on with their hands out and despite making lots of money in their careers they cant just give cash to everyone. So I can imagine them thinking "hey place a bet on my under for the next game because I'm going to go out early" seems like a low risk, not so evil way to put a few dollars in a friend's pocket.
Chauncey Billups was mentioned by name 2 years ago for running scam high stakes poker games [26:41] https://www.youtube.com/live/G-TKR5ca5jI?si=TBsKcTi2ZG1-h1G0...
Semi related: A couple of years ago a waste facility in Berlin measured increased levels of radio activity and traced it back to a restaurant where 13 cards laced with radioactive Iodine-125 were found:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42157129
I couldn't find anything about how the cheat actually worked, though. In Mongolia they found radioactive dice at an airport: https://conferences.iaea.org/event/16/contributions/7187/att...
X-ray table? That can't be good for your balls or ovaries.
Looks like near-IR of some sort but media calls everything x-ray since it's what people know. X-Rays would go through cards anyway. But you'd get nice pictures of peoples hands though, and cataracts after a night of play.
edit: now I think of it: if the cloth is thin enough you don't even need near-IR. Old fashioned IR camera's (those without any fancy filter) from the '00 showed though some relatively thin opaque synthetic material with a tiny IR source so ...
From the photos it looks like regular IR photos to me. Also note you don’t see the bones in the hands at the top of the photo.
Yes, my conclusion as well. Especially with a bright enough IR source. The bones reference was as a bit sarcastic reference if they'd used x-rays but since nobody got seriously ill that did not happen..
Could also be mm wave maybe? Cheap mm wave security gates and similar tech are ubiquitous now
I'm pretty sure it was just marks on the back of the cards that glasses/contacts then converted into an xray-like view, not any actual technology for seeing through the cards.
The table didn’t actually use X-rays. They’re using X-ray to mean it could be seen through with special cameras, perhaps IR sensitive.
I looked up the term "X-ray table" but couldn't find anything relevant except very recent results about this specific news.
Sounds like FBI invented this very stupid/confusing name for the story when they could have used much something much better and clearer. X-ray really has nothing to do with this.
I remember as a kid seeing comics imported from the US that had ads for "x-ray specs". My first clue that the US advertising standards were not quite the same as other countries. Perhaps it's a similar idea to that?
[flagged]
I don't think it's literally "X-Rays". A couple years ago I saw an infrared transparent table being demonstrated as a product prototype by a distributor of magic props at a conference for professional magicians. I played with it a while because I thought it was quite remarkable and had never seen anything like it. The top surface was a half-inch thick hard black plastic which appeared completely opaque. It was perfectly convincing as it even had faux wood grain texturing on the surface. It looked for all the world like a table you'd see at IKEA or Target. I put my phone's flashlight on full brightness under it pointing up and couldn't see any light coming through, even shading the spot with my hand.
The table had a bunch of IR emitters pointed up built into the supports holding the table surface but they were at least two feet away and well-obscured into the table leg design by more normal-seeming smooth plastic I associate with being IR-transparent. Of course, if you suspect the use of IR, it's quite easy to detect with your camera phone. There was a camera hidden into the middle of the table supports looking up which transmitted the image wirelessly to a monitor nearby. My own face-down playing cards were visible on the camera plain as day, so it doesn't require special cards.
Interestingly, the magic distributor showing it wasn't giving out any info on who made it, what it cost or when it might be available. They just said they were "showing it to gauge interest" and might carry it at some point in the future. They're a large, long-time, reputable distributor of other people's products so I don't think they were involved in creating it. It hasn't made an appearance at subsequent conventions, so they must have decided it wouldn't be popular with magicians - which makes perfect sense. It would have been expensive and pretty technically involved for a limited-use magic prop. Good magicians have a many easier and cheaper ways to learn the identity of hidden cards :-). But the fact such a thick, textured, optically opaque surface could be IR transparent was pretty nifty.
As a former magician I was surprised to read the gang was using 'reader' cards (backs marked with ink visible to special glasses). No one uses those anymore as there are so many better ways to do the same thing. Seems like this gang was just into various tech toys and kind of lazy. In reality, once you control the environment, cards and have confederates in the game - cheating to win is trivial without any tech if you know what you're doing.
Next podcast sponsor fad: lead-lined underwear. PbUndies
wasn't tim ferris promoting one of these products years ago? was like a faraday cage for your nether region.
My cousin (submarine nuke plant operator) has stories of his compatriots using lead foil to line their pants.
Bundies! Mascot should be Al Bundy.
Gotta call them “Weighted Undies”
Nothing like a night of high profile illegal poker while getting blasted with radiation. /s
i wonder if we're not conflating xray with terahertz radiation perhaps? the former being used by a company called corrections one that produces a horrifying whole-body X-Ray of a prisoner to detect contraband (certainly not healthy.)
Terahertz radiation is used in airports with (arguable) safety and efficacy. the resolution is sufficient to read protest statements written under a passengers shirt in metallic ink. I wonder if it could read cards should they be specially crafted similarly.
https://www.markedcardsshop.com
This appears to be the / a source for the devices in question. It's worth reading over the technical details of how it all works. It's both terrifying and impressive. Cards can be identified using a barcode encoded on their thin edge from meters away.
This can be done with no tech at legit casinos. Just have a group of people with a predetermined “tell” system so that only the best hand in the group competes against the fish. In a 4 player game, with 3 teamplayers and 1 fish, thats 75% of games you’ll win. With zero tech.
Collusion in live casinos is a real thing for sure, but it's not exactly easy to pull off.
1) Most card rooms these days are 8 or 9 players, so your team would need to be at least 3, maybe 4 to really swing the odds in your favor.
2) You need a subtle but effective way to signal to your team the relative strength of your hand. Think baseball signals, but way more low key. "If I touch my watch, I have an Ace" etc. You'll probably want to mix these up across the hours or days of play.
3) Seats typically do open one at a time, and you want to trickle in your team to avoid suspicion. Higher stakes games, like $5-10, where there are thousands of dollars in front of most players are your goal, and good news is that these are typically more rare so there may be only one table running. Your teammates will have to wait it out, but once at the table, they can stay for hours.
4) You'll never know exactly what your targets are holding, but knowing that your teammates folded a flush draw for example can help you narrow your opponents cards to a smaller range of possibilities. You'll want to position your teammates around the table to create "squeeze" situations where two of the team can trap a target in between.
It takes some creative subtlety, but it can be very hard to impossible to detect collusion in live games.
A few issues:
* The casino takes a rake, so you lose money every hand, but you only win when the fish bets and loses. You’re also expected to tip the dealer
* Everything is on camera and dealers remember players, so there will be a lot of witnesses and evidence
* Seats often open one at a time, so you’d potentially lose money at other tables waiting to play together. Or, you all show up at once and ask to start a new table together, which would get suspicious.
* If you don’t know the fish’s cards, there’s still a chance you lose and lose big
Wouldn't this be discovered and get you banned by the casino?
And get your hand smashed by a hammer in the back room
Which hand?
> including members of La Cosa Nostra crime families,
I'm not sure if this reflects common usage in English but in Italian, Cosa Nostra is just a synonym for Mafia, not the name of a specific family. Also, in Italian it's never preceded by the article "La".
Mafia nowadays is used as a synonym for organized crime so Cosa Nostra makes it clear it means the original Mafia.
Cosa Nostra is a well defined organization operating in Sicily, that term isn’t used for other Mafias around Italy or other Sicilian criminal organizations. Among its past leaders you can find Bernardo Provenzano and Matteo Messina Denaro.
My point was that in Italy Cosa Nostra refers to all Sicilian mafia and not a single family. I should have been more specific.
La Cosa Nostra is the umbrella term for the American Mafia, as opposed to the Sicilian Mafia (Costa Nostra)
The term was coined by the FBI specifically to make that geographic distinction.
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that!
I can’t help but think this recent Wired video[1] has some accidental overlap with how they cheated.
1: https://youtu.be/JQ20ilE5DtA?si=_MHmhjKGMKk4sobB
Sorry to be completely off-topic, but: I'm really reluctant to click on anything with these 'share IDs' and usually remove them from any link I share with anyone. I don't want to make it even easier for the platforms to build networks of associated accounts.
I believe the Firefox extension CleanURLs helps with this.
I do the same thing!
Sorry to be pedantic but if you're clicking the link, YT gets the referer header even without the share id url parameter.
I vowed never to play poker in public again after watching Lennart Green play with a deck of cards. [0]
It's just not possible to trust another human being when significant money is involved in a game like that.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn-m1EMBcTg
The story behind how Chauncey got his coaching job is kind of sketchy as well!
The blazers didn't really listen to Dame at all, and the GM has known Chauncey for more than 30 years.
At the time of Chauncey being hired, his only coaching experience was ~1 year of being an assistant coach.
Former players being hired as head coaches without much other coaching experience is fairly common in the NBA.
Yes, but in this case the blazers head office said they were going to search for a coach, and they also took input from Dame on what coaches he thought would be good for the team.
They didn't do any search at all, and just went straight to hiring Chauncey.
This partially contributed to Dame leaving - it also didn't help that Chauncey and Dame didn't quite get along (and also deciding to bench him in the last 10 games of the season to tank).
I'm honestly fine with players being hired as head coaches. Before looking into it I thought it was totally fine with Chauncey, especially given his track record as a leader on the Pistons and being a phenomenal classic point guard.
The main issue for me is just telling people you're going to do a search... and then not doing it.
This is like starting a YC company with fewer steps.
Between all these recent gambling stories with coaches and players and the Kawhi thing I think I’m done with the NBA. The NBA’s gambling push has done nothing but gross me out. Greed unbridled. They saw the 1919 World Series and said “Let’s bet on this shit.”
This plus a lot of the soft greed. The insistence on a foul-centric game that leads to over 50% longer games, the ridiculous lack of investment on its own broadcast infra, the refusal to shorten the season (which is the longest in pro sports, longer than baseball's season, despite being less than half the games), and the consultant-driven management decisions - I have so much contempt for Adam Silver for making me hate the game I love most.
Everything Silver did grew revenue fourfold. By every metric, he’s a good commissioner. And yet I don’t know a single person in real life who actually likes the NBA. People I talk to find the NBA anywhere from inaccessible to an outright turnoff, due to load management (and player pay), tanking, a glacial pace of play, and so on. And so the only way I can engage the game is by listening to podcasts about it. Podcasts that now belch gambling ads at me constantly.
That is _nuts_ that the basketball season is longer than the MLB season. I never would have guessed that.
Let's go Jays! Looking forward to this World Series.
Also not a fan of the constant inundation with gambling ads even if they have literally no interest to me. Just seems like a net negative for a society that realized cigarette ads are bad, but can't seem to figure that out for alcohol or gambling.
At least the public education campaigns have started earlier, I definitely see ads talking about where to get help if you're having an issue fairly frequently.
Public education is one thing. But kids aren't protected from the ads and can't even have reasonable discussions about it. They're just being brainwashed around it. They see superstars and celebrities endorsing it all. Then all the language around it is "play" and "game" and "fun" and "win" which has very specific appeal to children. The prominence also makes it seem vetted and okay in a kids eyes (if it were bad, it wouldn't be in these places). I'd legitimately rather my kids see ads for smoking cigarettes. The conversations to be had around it are much much easier. Gambling and other psychological addictions are tougher to convey, but potentially very damaging nonetheless.
I understand, and am against the constant advertising of it.
But it's also important to remember just how successful the smoking psa campaign has been. Especially given the cost! Rates have fallen dramatically, just by telling people to "watch out!" in public spaces that reach young folks ears.
I don't think it's easy to attribute it to any specific part of the 'campaign' -- it's multifaceted. Making it illegal to smoke in public spaces may be the single most important part of reducing smoking in subsequent generations. There's also taxes. And removing it from media (we hardly see people smoke on camera unless it's for a 'period piece'). And just straight up treating it like a health issue.
We could be doing equivalent things for gambling (and we have in the past) so this erosion will have consequences for decades.
I stopped watching a couple of years ago but I assume they're still doing this: dealing out every game to a different network. You needed like 4 sports subscriptions just to be able to watch the season, sometimes even to watch the championship. For me that was the bridge too far.
NFL isn't far behind
NFL Network, ESPN, Prime, Peacock, YouTube...
All that mainly because some streaming services are willing to pay a more competitive amount of money for single (albeit national) weekly game broadcasts to sweeten their offering and get more subscribers.
Of course the NFL isn't gonna turn down $1B per year from Amazon for TNF. They get ~$2B from CBS and Fox each for the combined 10 Sunday games, then another couple billion from NBC for one Sunday night game, and another couple billion from ESPN for Monday night.
I think it's unlikely a single broadcaster would spend $12+B/year for exclusive rights to all games.
A large portion of NFL games can be viewed on network TV. The same cannot be said for the NBA.
"for now" seems like a reasonable thing to add to that sentence.
The number of games you can watch on network TV is decreasing slowly but steadily.
There was over 90 free throws shot in 1 game yesterday
It was crazy
> which is the longest in pro sports, longer than baseball's season, despite being less than half the games
You are clearly referring to calendar time, in which case the NHL season is longer
This interview with a former Turkish NBA player who protested things happening in China with simple statements on his shoes convinced me the NBA has no morals whatsoever.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3LUPh7waoWtydoiwjEgP16?si=-...
Eh, even as a Celtics fan I would be cautious of taking what Enes Freedom has to say as gospel. He definitely has a narrative he’s pushing
What's the narrative? Human rights abuse is bad, speaking out about it got him fired? I have a hard time seeing some nafarious angle to what he talked about other than China doesn't want their shit called out.
It's been like that forever. Makes it very hard to take the NBA seriously.
NBA stopped being an interesting sports entertainment product to me by the year 2004. It has generated a handful of interesting narratives since, but not really enough to keep me engaged in the face of its enshitification.
Isn't legal gambling default profitable? The house is allowed to remove players who are good at games that involve skill and set the win ratio on games that don't (as specified in regulations).
Is this a case of bureaucracy forcing people into illegality?
This one would be an amazing film exploring both the intersection of tech and the NBA and the families involved too. It would be a stunning production if done with high quality in mind.
Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684548
Yessss. "Earlier" or "Other Discussions" are good ways of framing it. 'Dupe' isn't apt. Thank you.
If these folks had used this level of creativity and determination to make something useful…I bet their results would’ve been fantastic.
This is a common fallacy. Criminals often turn to crime because they're not very good at honest endeavors. Having failed to succeed on a fair playing field (hard), they victimize the weak and take advantage of others' naivety and trust (easy).
Almost nothing about crime is indicative of an intelligent mind that could be put to good use. It's a lot of lowlife midwits who are bitter they have no chance to compete or associate with real players.
Or they were raised with terrible and predatory culture. Screwing other people to get ahead is something that is frequently taught in childhood by parents and older role models that were also taught that mentality. We've all seen the Mafia movies and shows, these are family organizations where everyone's Aunts, Cousins, etc. is somehow "connected". There's a big uphill battle for a kid to come up in that environment and turn out like a model citizen. No excuses...
And then they run for office..
Where they actual X-Rays? Exposing people to ionizing radiation? Or was is this used in a figurative sense
That seems like a lot of work. TFA said that they arrested 30 people, and got $7 million out of it. The fancy tech involved must have taken a good chunk of that.
It sounds like each of them could get at most a six-figure payday out of this. Which is no chump change, to be sure, but it sounds like many of them could have made as much money without the risk of going to jail just by getting a desk job.
Plus, there's no way a conspiracy that big is going to remain secret for long.
Maybe the expected to get away with it for longer and get a bigger payoff. But wow, it seems like a ton of effort.
All these comments assume that 30 million is _all_ the mob has made with these machines, and that the tech must be very expensive.
Usually when they pull out the big piles of drugs for the TVs, I assume that's the tip of the iceberg. So why is it that here, with four families involved, we think the only money they've made is what's been shown to us?
Also, x-ray tables, rigged card shufflers, and funny glasses don't necessarily sound like they're the most expensive things in the world.
So my guess is...
Combined with these fellas other hustles this was probably a nice chunk of change to bring in for a relatively low amount of work post initial set up. I mean, you're sitting around playing rigged poker with a bunch of millionaires and basketball players or whatever. Probably having some drinks, I'd imagine there's pretty ladies around, cigars, cocaine. Whatever.
Sounds more relaxing than extorting deli owners block by block like all those movies about the 70s show.
And the best part? The people you're robbing are probably much less likely to resort to violence as recourse.
The card shufflers and the phone app that reads marked cards would probably put them back a few thousand at the most.
X-Ray tables?? Seriously? Why are the feds looking at the gambling, and NOT the uncontrolled beaming of raw x-rays into a room full of people. There's GOT to be a law covering that...
Yet another reason to not watch pro sports. Entitled and overpaid athlete criminals.
This is probably a very HN comment, but I cannot imagine why people actually like gambling and poker:
- high likelihood you lose money
- the point of the game is to lie to friends and strangers
- you're stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours
- the only victory condition is that you take money from other people
Poker is a great game. There are so many aspects to it where you can go down a rabbit hole of strategy to improve your game - there's math, making decisions with incomplete information, deduction, reading people, all kinds of non-verbal communication, etc. Although there's chance involved, it is undoubtedly a skill game. The gambling is one of the unfortunate aspects, but it just doesn't play the same without some money involved. You can get around that a little bit with house games where everyone throws in $20 or small buy-in sit and go games at a casino.
Another game that's worth checking out if some of this sounds interesting but you really don't like gambling is "Blood on the Clocktower". It's a social logic and deduction party game. There's chance, bluffing, incomplete information, trying to figure out what other players have, etc. It's completely different, but it can scratch some of the same itches and it's a blast to play. My friends and I play it with our kids.
There's also Match Poker, which makes a Team Sport out of Poker and removes all the gambling and chance - https://matchpokerfed.org/match-poker/
Yes. See 'Thinking in Bets' by Annie Duke for a good summary of why Poker is interesting / useful. World is Casino!
Blood on the Clocktower is great! My 15yo son is always trying to get a group of 8+ together for a game.
Came here to recommend Skull, a quick and easy to learn bluffing game, of which the designer said he was aiming for 'the feelings of poker without the money or luck' and I would say succeeded.
"the only victory condition is that you take money from other people" is also why I cannot be interested in day trading or cryptocurrency speculation, and will likely die penniless.
As a former poker pro: I hated gambling, I just was willing to do it when I had an edge and at poker I had an edge. I almost never gambled at anything else unless I was getting an edge from promotions. Still don’t.
There’s a approximately a 45% chance of losing money on any given day, even for the best players, but it decreases over a big sample. It’s definitely a marathon, not a sprint. That’s true of most things worth doing though.
It’s not lying when it’s part of the game, and kinda silly to view it that way. Is it lying by omission to not tell your chess opponent your strategy?
You are stuck sitting at a table, that’s true. But you choose when you’re there and the only rules really are basic civility so I never found that part difficult.
Money is the scoreboard. Everyone who sits down knows that. I’d argue it’s a lot less bad than how most tech companies make money these days. I’m not selling anyone’s data without them knowing about or understanding it. I’m just taking money from a guy who is trying to take my money. We both voluntarily put the money up to be taken and can stop doing so at any point.
This tracks. Not a pro here, but if you have a 5% edge at a $20 8-seat home game your EV is BEST CASE maybe $20/hour. Which is good for entertainment but not much else
Well, if you’re paying NL against people who don’t know what they’re doing, your win rate should be much higher. But yeah you can only take however much money is on the table so nobody makes a living playing the really low stakes.
Back in my day most cash games were limit hold’em (it’s been awhile) and you could pretty easily get to making $50 an hour beating up an amateurs. That was equivalent to about $90/hr today which is pretty great if you’re a young kid playing a game you enjoy.
It entirely depends on the vibes, the company, and the game, in my opinion.
At one job, we used it as a social time, 6 to 15 people from work (had to run two tables for those big nights) got together Saturday night, bbq'd some food, maybe watched a game on tv if there was a good one, and played a friendly game. Had a few drinks and enjoyed the company, while cards were played in the background.
Mildly competitive, but it was a flat $40 buy in with no more money allowed so the stakes were never incredibly high.
At another company, one guy in particular was the driver to get games going and he always wanted the stakes too high (for my taste) with lots of money moving around. I only went to two of those, wasn't my style.
With that mindset literally anything is unfun. Do you enjoy anything in particular that does not produce value? If so, you're also very likely losing something, stuck somewhere, etc.
Playing poker on a more than casual basis seems like work. But, then again so does something like Farmville. Gotta keep grinding.
Texas hold 'em is quite fun for casuals under these conditions:
The amount of money involved is small compared to the incomes of those playing, where most players have the expectation that they won't get money back and that is fine for the enjoyment they get out of the game, and the pot isn't big enough to be worth cheating about. Everyone puts in the same amount of money. You play texas hold 'em no limit with escalating blinds starting with a pretty big stack of chips, just like a real tournament. When people are out, they can't buy back in. You play until everyone is out, and the Top N players get some money back.
Lots of fun games involve lying, but you can play all night long and never tell a single lie and still win. Your only necessary verbs in a game of poker are "Call, raise, fold". Everything else is optional. If you bet big on a hand, you aren't saying anything about what is in your hand, lie or not. All the interpretation of what that means is in your opponents head. Lots of very good poker players don't talk about the hands at all.
My family quite commonly plays Texas Hold 'em for _no money at all_, everyone just gets a stack of chips.
Yeah this is really the best way to do it, I've even played friendly family games with candy or baked goods as the chips. Great fun! Problematic when you're munching on your bank though.
You don't have to lie to win at poker, you just have to bluff sometimes.
The game is similar to chess when played at a moderate to high level.
I'll share my experience. Playing a small pot poker game every now and then can be fun between friends. I've had a few groups of guys I'd go play poker with from time to time throughout the years.
The buy in would be something kind of low for everyone playing, like $20. No repeat buy-ins. So the loss if you didn't win wasn't much, and the payout wasn't exactly life changing but like take your spouse out to a nice date night with the winnings kind of thing. I'd often spend $20 or so doing some other kind of event with friends from time to time anyways, so its not like its some large amount being spent on entertainment. Paying for a batting cage for the evening or go-karts or renting a karaoke booth is also a 100% chance of losing money, should we also never do these things?
There's lots of deception to be played in tons of card games and board games, I don't know why poker would be held as something odd. Any game where you're holding a secret hand pretty much involves some amount of hidden motivations. One might also bluff in Catan or deceive their opponents in their strategy, should we also avoid playing that game? I'll try and hide my routes from everyone else when I'm playing ticket to ride, is that bad?
I'm stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours. Like any other board or card game. People are stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours playing tabletop role-playing games as well. To me, it was a chance to catch up with these friends, which at that point in time in our lives catching up at the poker game was kind of the big quarterly check-in with each other. I loved spending the time with these friends, sitting around the table and sharing life with each other, often also partaking in meals and drinks.
The victory condition is winning the pot, yes. Which, as mentioned, for at least in my games wasn't exactly some life changing amount of money one was taking from friends. We all went in knowing we'd probably be out the $20 in the end, and in the end the winner would have a small amount of money as a little bonus. And as mentioned, most of us would use it to take our significant others out on a date the next night.
I honestly don't see it as any different from spending a night playing any other board game or roleplaying game with friends, other than with a small bit of money involved as well. Obviously, other people go way harder with this gambling, which quickly just becomes an addition to the high of winning.
> - high likelihood you lose money
When I play games like this, I don't bet more than I can afford to lose - and paying $20 to sit at a table with friends playing poker is actually cheaper than going out to a bar with them.
> - the point of the game is to lie to friends and strangers
Are there any games with hidden information that you find interesting? Or any competitive games at all? Things like Werewolf, or Go Fish, or Settlers of Catan? For that matter, even in a game without hidden information, like chess, you're still trying to outwit your opponents.
> - you're stuck sitting at a table and following rules for hours
I mean, you can leave if you're not having fun.
> - the only victory condition is that you take money from other people
But you also spend time with friends.
Poker is so much fun with friends. It's not about winning, it's about hanging out and being a little competitive. It's a great way to hang out in real life for a few hours in today's online world.
Different strokes. (It doesn't appeal to me at all either fwiw, but I'm sure what I do for fun doesn't appeal to plenty of people)
I hate casino games but I enjoy poker. I don't play often anymore but I used to play online a lot, multi tabling.
There's something very satisfying about making thousands of decisions that have a positive expected value and seeing the math win throughout the variance, resulting in a proven edge.
Like anything in life, it's fun to get good at something and at some point it's beyond the math and theory, it feels like the cards become transparent at times, you just have a gut feeling that this hand, this person is trying to bluff. It can be based on what you know about them or just how fast they clicked or their bet size, but this guy wants you to fold so you'll call with almost nothing and still win.
But overall as a profession fuck poker, you don't contribute anything to the world.
You don’t just get to beat and be handed currency from people; you get to keep their money (now it is your money!)
It’s fun?
Would you pay for an experience somewhere and then call it a loss because your bank balance is now lower?
It’s not lying, it’s a game and everyone knows the rules.
Cant the victory condition be… having fun? Why so transactional
>It’s not lying, it’s a game and everyone knows the rules.
It's deception at a minimum. Lying could have a stricter definition depending on who you're talking about.
Right. But everyone knows you're all attempting to deceive each other; it's part of the game. It's consensual.
Everyone at the table agrees to those conditions.
I mean, one could write something like "I cannot imagine why people actually like ski resorts"
- 100% likelihood you lose money
- the point of the game is fly down a mountain and not hit any trees (about 45 more deaths per year than poker in the US)
- you're stuck sitting in a lift or a line and following rules for hours
- there are no victory conditions
Skiing is downright sisyphean. I'm only sort of joking - I live in Switzerland and since I started ski-touring, where you climb up the mountain and then ski down it, this feeling is even stronger.
But I think Sisyphus must have gotten at least some satisfaction for almost reaching the top.
I have Sisyphus as my wallpaper. When people ask about it I say he's the patron saint of software development.
Camus strikes again.
> 100% likelihood you lose money
Paying money for a service and losing money gambling are two different things.
> the point of the game is fly down a mountain and not hit any trees (about 45 more deaths per year than poker in the US)
It's not a game. It's an activity.
> you're stuck sitting in a lift or a line and following rules for hours
Not the whole time.
> there are no victory conditions
Right, because it's not a game.
paying money for a service and gambling are not totally different, especially if you more or less know your odds before entering. ./when I play blackjack (rarely) I understand I am more or less paying to play a game for enjoyment.
This is honestly an odd take. For most people the money is in exchange for having fun (there are pros and likely addicts though for which the money is the goal). I play in fantasy sports leagues and I pay into them. I don’t even care about winning the pot - I enjoy the game. The victory condition is having fun. Winning money is a bonus.
The point of the game isn’t to lie to friends. Is this how you see the point of chess or sports in general? Or any game where revealing your strategy would diminish your chances of winning?
I don’t think your comment is very HN typical, but it does indicate some other qualities you may have - not bad or good, but not typical.
Right so what are the downsides?
I don't consider poker gambling (that would be something like craps which I also find fun). It is a skill you can build and not necessarily lose money. I also don't consider it lying when everyone at the table agrees to how the game is played. Playing 'good' poker requires folding a lot and it can get boring sitting at a table.
Poker is a lot like business distilled down. The player is managing resources and deciding where to use them while dealing with incomplete information.
Why do people smoke?
Reason is rarely our motive.
Reason cannot be a motive.
(Reason can be how you get from a motive to a chosen action to fulfill that motive, though.)
Would that also apply to an AGI?
because it's very fun
You got many answers already, but a couple more points:
Poker doesn't require lying or table talk. Bluffing is rule-legal strategic deception expressed through betting. More like a feint in sports than cheating.
If "sitting at a table following rules" is the issue, that's true of most games. And formats vary: many are short and cash games are leave-anytime.
I dislike all gambling except poker. Anything that is purely chance and not within my control at all (roulette, sports betting) is dull and stressful. The odds are always against you. Poker has a big element of chance of course, but it’s really a game of skill. It hits a sweet spot of mathematics and social engineering that lights up a lot of neurons in a very engaging way.
When it comes to lying, in the real world I tend to be hypermoral and honest to a fault. It’s fun to have a game structure where dishonesty and aggression are acceptable.
Seems like Trump is going after his old enemies in New York.
Also, they spelled "Bonnano" wrong in that article. It is Bonanno.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonanno_crime_family
Bon Anno = Good Year
Bon Nano = Good Text Editor
No idea why people are disagreeing with this, you are not from NY and you do not know the history here. You do not do big business in NY with out the mob.
https://www.gao.gov/products/t-osi-88-7
https://www.amny.com/news/the-mob-is-making-a-comeback-in-co...
And...
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/donald-trump-crimin...
"One of the key figures involved in these deals has been the Russian-born, mob-linked businessman Felix Sater, who plead guilty to racketeering for his role in a $40 million stock fraud scheme involving the Genovese and Bonanno crime families49 and was convicted of stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass in New York."
"Despite their long association, Trump has repeatedly denied knowing about Sater’s criminal past, notwithstanding the fact that Sater widely represented himself as a Trump associate in business deals."
This is silly.
People used to play poker, and cheat, and the whole thing was illegal.
Now, people play poker, and cheat, and they want the government to police their poker games and make sure they're fair.
Complete waste of resources.
> Now, people play poker, and cheat, and they want the government to police their poker games and make sure they're fair.
No, if you personally run a poker game in your house and cheat your friends the government doesn’t care. The FBI isn’t going to be interested.
If you join the mafia and run an organized crime ring that operates poker games as a business which systematically defrauds people for large amounts of money and funnels the proceeds to organized crime through money laundering operations, the FBI will be interested.
If you look at this story and only see “some people cheated at a poker game” you’re missing the real story. This was a full on organized crime business operation
Okay, a lot of people cheated at a lot of poker games? I feel like we're being redundant here.
So, their cheating was organized and systematic? Yeah, you can't really cheat consistently without having a scheme.
Did anyone really think the mafia were running fair backroom poker games?
It's not even lunch yet and "the mafia should be allowed to build onto their tower of crimes in peace" is a take that I don't think that will be beat today.
The poker games were run by the mafia, who pulled in a lot of cash by luring and cheating suckers. I want the FBI to stop scams that funnel money to criminal organizations.
A lot of cash? It says “at least $7m” over 6 years across supposedly 4 crime families and how many people? They’d have been better off opening up a Jimmy John’s franchise.
The key is a lot of cash, or cryptocurrency.
If you run a Jimmy John’s, most of your customers will pay with credit cards. Everything runs through banks. You can’t launder that easily. It’s all traceable. It’s all taxable.
Run a poker operation and you can get your marks to give you crypto, cash, or small transfers.
$7 million in pure cash and crypto proceeds from a poker game is a lot more valuable than $7 million in revenue from a sandwich shop for an organized crime operation.
> If you run a Jimmy John’s, most of your customers will pay with credit cards. Everything runs through banks. You can’t launder that easily.
You don't need to launder it, it was acquired legally
Fast food franchises aren’t generating $1M a year either. Ok a McDonald’s in a high traffic area can, but a sandwich shop anywhere? Nope.
We’re supposedly talking about 4 major crime families, it wouldn’t be one McDonalds it would be dozens and dozens. And all legal.
Nothing about this story makes sense other other than as yet another headline to try to get people talking about something other than Epstein.
Did illegal gambling take place? I’m sure. Were 4 different crime families investing significant resources to take home barely $1m/year? I’m extremely skeptical and given this is coming from Kash “I always look like I just did a line of coke” Patel, I’d say it’s more likely than not we’re getting incomplete, if not bad information
Yes, these corporations need to be stopped. Like Wells Fargo. Still trading in the market. Maybe we should go after the stock market as well.
https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/wells-farg...
Situation is pretty bad if you can jail mafia only based on the cheating on poker.
If there's a business that's being run fraudulently then I want them to be held accountable for that.
I’m expecting some pardons will shape the expectation that this all could have been avoided with strategic political donations. In this era, what would you accept as a substitution for accountability?
"previously people could cheat, now they can't" ?? how is that bad.
That's not the part that's bad. I don't care whether they cheat or not. I don't want the government policing what is and isn't fair in a poker / NBA / etc game.
I think arresting people for cheating legitimizes backroom / mafia gambling. All the other rings (and those left from this one) can say "Look, those other guys got arrested. The law protects you. We don't want that to happen to us. Our game is definitely fair." Of course, they too are cheating.
The only reason the FBI cares here is probably because one of the victims had pull. If you or I get cheated, the FBI won't care about that.
> I don't want the government policing what is and isn't fair in a poker / NBA / etc game.
Operating a business that defrauds people is the domain of government enforcement.
I think you’re trying to reduce this to some sort of small scale friendly poker game between friends. It was not. It was an organized crime business operation that was systematically committing fraud.
Fraud is illegal and within scope of government enforcement.
The raison d'etre for the offense of fraud is to protect commerce.
The state / society needs to enforce a basic level of trust for Business A to buy widgets from Business B, and for Customer C to be employed, etc.
Betting on sports / poker / etc. is not part of that. Nobody is creating anything of value when you spin the roulette wheel. At best, the house wins and most players lose... and that is a harm to society. At worst, the house cheats or some subset of players cheat, and most players lose... and that too is a harm to society. (Edit: At worse worst, it leads to violence, extortion, etc...)
Gambling does not deserve the legitimacy of being policed.
If the police don't police it then the marks will pay someone to whack the cheaters.
> I think arresting people for cheating legitimizes backroom / mafia gambling. All the other rings (and those left from this one) can say "Look, those other guys got arrested. The law protects you."
Disagree, this case demonstrates the exact opposite -- you think your underground game is legit because there's celebrities playing? Think again, it's a far more sophisticated scam operation than you could imagine.
> The only reason the FBI cares here is probably because one of the victims had pull.
Again, I doubt it. Likely it's because the mafia is involved, and according to the indictment "the defendants and their co-conspirators used threats of force and violence to secure the repayment of debts from illegal poker games."
did you read the article?
While I agree that they're probably not arguing in good faith, “Did you even read the article?” is explicitly called out in the hn guidelines.
I think the comment goes more in the direction: “previously playing poker was a totally private thing, didn’t cost me a dime, now part of my taxes is used for that”
I'd appreciate it if the police could help stop cheating in my kids' soccer game as well. One of those brats keeps pretending to be injured! Lock him up.
you're right, they should outlaw gambling as a business because it's inherently predatory, rigged ("the house always wins" isn't just a cute phrase) and has addiction issues that disproportionately impact the poor
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